THE  HEART  OF  MUSIC 


"  Now  .  .  .  my  stringed  instruments  come  in.  These  to  the  left  of  the 
orchestra  break  into  a  soft  slow  movement,  the  music  swaying  drowsily, 
from  side  to  side  as  it  were,  with  a  noise  like  the  rustling  of  boughs. 
It  must  not  be  much,  however,  for  my  stringed  instruments  to  the  right 
have  begun  the  very  song  of  the  morning.  The  bows  tremble  upon  the 
strings,  like  the  limbs  of  a  dancer,  who,  a-tip-toe,  prepares  to  bound 
into  her  ecstacy  of  motion.  Away  I  The  song  soars  into  the  air  as  if 
it  had  the  wings  of  a  kite  ;  here  swooping,  there  swooping,  wheeling 
upward,  falling  suddenly,  checked,  poised  for  a  moment  on  quivering 
wings,  and  again  away.  It  is  waltz  time,  and  you  hear  the  hours 
dancing  to  it  I"  —  William  Makepeace  Thackeray. 


THE 


HEART  OF  MUSIC 

THE    STORY   OF   THE   VIOLIN 


BY 


ANNA  ALICE   CHAPIN 

AUTHOR  OF  "  MASTERS  OF  MUSIC, 
"  MAKERS  OF  SONG,"  ETC. 


FRONTISPIECE    AND    DECORATIONS    BY 

JOHN    RAE 


NEW   YORK 

DODD,    MEAD   AND    COMPANY 

1921 


/  V  I   K    0   O's 


M 


Copyright,    1906 
By  Dodd,   Me\d    a>d   Compaky 


if^f  r       '■  '     H-Uou.t     1^' 


THE    UNIVERSITY    PRESS,     CAMBRIDGE,     U.S.A. 


To 
HARRY   ROWE    SHELLEY 

WITH    WARMEST    GRATITUDE   AND    APPRECIATION 

FROM    HIS    FRIEND    AND    PUPIL 

THIS    BOOK    IS    DEDICATED 


552481 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Prelude ix 

I.  In  the  Beginning I 

II.  The  Lyre  of  the  World    ....  7 

III.  The  Star  of  Shame ,27 

IV.  Dream  Music 45 

V.  Apollo's  Message 61 

VI.  In  Pagan  Rome 77 

VII.  The  Dark  Days 89 

VIII.  With  Rebeck  and  Viol 107 

IX.  The  Troubadour's  Fiddle    .      .      .      .  127 

X.  Further  Adventures  of  the  Viol       .  i4i 

XI.  The  Lute-Maker  of  Tyrol        .      .      .  i53 

XII.  The  Gray  Friar  and  Others   .      .      .  169 

XIII.  The  Town  of  Violins i83 

XIV.  The  Song  of  the  Pine 201 

XV.  In  the  Workshop  of  Amati      .      .      .  219 

XVI.  The  Violin's  Lover 287 

XVII.  GUARNERIUS 2^7 

XVIII.  The  Master 265 

XIX.  The  One  Perfect  Thing       .      .      .      .  287 


PRELUDE 


•'Into  the  town  will  I,  my  frendes  to  vysit  there. 
And  hither  straight  again  to  see  th'  end  of  this  yere  ; 
In  the  meantime,  fellowes,  pype  up  your  fiddles,  I  say,  take  them. 
And  let  your  frendes  here  have  such  mirth  as  ye  can  make  them." 

T.  Colwell,  1575. 

\JF  necessity  a  history  of  the  vioHn  must  be  a 
history,  first  and  foremost,  of  everything  except 
the  vioKn.  The  vioHn  has  no  history.  When 
Stradivari  made  the  Perfect  Fiddle  its  history 
was  begun  and  ended  in  one  breath.  One  could 
w^rite  elaborate  stories  of  Paganini's  "Cannon" 
and  Sarasati's  ' '  Boissier,"  but  this  would  be  a  his- 
tory of  violins  and  violinists ,  not  of  the  violin . 

The  writer,  in  deep  love  of  the  greatest  of  all 
instruments  and  a  desire  to  trace  its  origin  to  its 
most  remote  sources,  has  found  herself  traversing 
very  circuitous  paths,  and  consorting  with  a 
mixed  company  of  instruments, — all  ancestors 
of  the  fiddle,  undoubtedly,  but  bearing  little  more 
than  a  family  resemblance  to  the  beautiful  thing  the 
evolution  of  which  she  had  begun  to  investigate. 
She  can  only  express  the  hope  that  her  readers 
will  find  some  small  tenth  of  the  delight  which 
came   to   her,  in   her  voyages  in   search  of  the 

[ix] 


«is  Prelude  ^» 

ancestry  of  the  instrument  beloved  by  the  whole 
world.  She  wishes  to  deny  any  claim  to  hav- 
ing done  her  task  other  than  in  the  most  super- 
ficial manner.  The  student  will  readily  see  the 
possibilities  of  research  and  information  which 
the  author  passed  resolutely  by.  Her  effort  was 
to  make  for  herself  a  rude  genealogy  of  the  violin, 
— the  briefest  and  simplest  resume  of  the  history 
of  stringed  instruments  leading  up  to  the  perfect 
fiddle.  More  than  this  she  has  made  no  attempt 
to  accomplish.  Into  the  hands  of  those  as  violin 
mad  as  herself  she  commends  her  work,  with 
neither  protestation,  pretension,  nor  excuse. 

One's  most  impassioned  study  of  the  art  of 
violin-making  receives  a  jolt  by  reading  this 
paragraph  in   "Knight's  Dictionary": 

"Locusts  are  fiddlers.  Their  hind  legs  are 
the  bars,  and  the  projecting  veins  of  their  wing- 
covers  the  strings.  On  each  side  of  the  body  is 
the  first  segment  of  the  abdomen.  Just  above 
and  a  little  behind  the  thighs  is  a  deep  cavity, 
closed  by  a  thin  piece  of  skin  stretched  tightly 
across  it  like  a  banjo  cover.  When  a  locust 
begins  to  play  he  bends  the  shank  of  one  hind 
leg  beneath  the  thigh,  and  then  draws  the  leg 
briskly  up  and  down  several  times  against  the  pro- 
jecting lateral  edge  and  veins  of  the  wing-cover." 

[-1 


<®>  Prelude  <^^ 

Of  what  avail  to  spend  four  thousand  years 
in  evolving  an  instrument  that  a  grasshopper 
carries  about  with  him,  and  can  perform  upon 
simply  by  ' '  bending  the  shank  of  one  hind  leg  ?  '* 

"  Le  lutherie,"  says  a  good  abbe  of  old, 
"nest  pas  seulment  un  metier,  c'est  un  art.'* 
But  above  all  it  f^  a   "metier," — a  vocation,  a 

gift- 

Violin-making  has  been  taught  ever  since  there 

were  violin  makers,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  can 
never  really  be  taught.  It  must  come  as  natu- 
rally as  it  does  to  the  grasshopper.  It  is  one 
of  the  spontaneous  talents  of  the  world,  —  like 
poetry,  or  cooking,  or  making  love. 

That  is  why  so  much  of  this  work  is  concerned 
with  stringed  music,  which  has  nothing  to  do 
with  science,  or  calculation,  or  accuracy,  as 
people  estimate  it,  but  has  bubbled  up,  after  the 
fashion  of  springs,  folk-songs,  and  passion, 
among  peoples  of  various  races,  since  time  began. 
In  great  numbers  of  old  books  you  may  find  the 
Brain  of  Music,  but  that  requires  three-thirds  of 
a  lifetime  of  study.  It  is  much  easier  and  more 
satisfactory  to  find  the  Heart. 


[xi] 


oln  the  cJSe^innin£f 


1  HUS  rose  a  song — the  harmony  of  times 
Before  the  winds  blew  Europe  o'er  these  climes. 
True  they  had  vices  —  such  are  Nature's  growth  — 
But  only  the  barbarian's  —  we  have  both  : 
The  sordor  of  civilisation,  mix'd 
With  all  the  savage  which  man's  fall  hath  fix'd. 

Such  was  this  ditty  of  Tradition's  days, 
Which  to  the  dead  a  lingering  fame  conveys 
In  song,  where  fame  as  yet  hath  left  no  sign 
Beyond  the  sound  whose  charm  is  half  divine ; 
Which  leaves  no  record  to  the  sceptic  eye. 
But  yields  young  history  all  to  harmony  ; 
A  boy  Achilles  with  the  centaur's  lyre 
In  hand,  to  teach  him  to  surpass  his  sire. 
For  one  long-cherished  ballad's  simple  stave, 
Bung  from  the  rock,  or  mingled  with  the  wave. 
Or  from  the  bubbling  streamlet's  grassy  side. 
Or  gathering  mountain  echoes  as  they  glide, 
Hath  greater  power  o'er  each  true  heart  and  ear. 
Than  all  the  columns  Conquest's  minions  rear  ; 
Invites,  when  hieroglyphics  are  a  theme 
For  sage's  labours  or  the  student's  dream  ; 
Attracts,  when  History's  volumes  are  a  toil,  — 
The  first,  the  freshest  bud  of  Feeling's  soil. 
Such  was  this  rude  rhyme  — 

.   .    .  Such,  wherever  rise 
Lands  which  no  foes  destroy  or  civilise, 
Exist :   And  what  can  our  accomplish'd  art 
Of  verse  do  more  than  reach  the  awaken'd  heart? 

Btron. 


The  Heart  of  Music 

I.  —  In  the  Beginning 

OOME WHERE,  in  the  beginning  of  things, 
some  primitive  man,  as  yet  half  beast,  striving 
cumbrously  toward  his  heritage  of  immortahtj, 
found  that  certain  sounds  fell  kindly  on  the  ears, 
and  went  about  the  business  of  creating  them  for 
his  own  pleasure.  Somewhere,  in  the  beginning 
of  things,  he  blew  through  a  pierced  shell,  or 
beat  one  stone  on  another,  and  listened,  and  was 
pleased,  and  tried  again  because  he  was  pleased. 
Somewhere,  in  the  beginning  of  things,  he 
stretched  a  bear's  sinew  from  end  to  end  of  a 
bent  stick.  That  was  a  bow,  and  he  made  rude 
arrows,  and  used  the  two  in  combination  to  kill 
things,  that  he  afterwards  ate  in  unbecoming 
ravenousness  ;  also  as  a  method  of  disposing  of 
persons  he  did  not  like. 

Finally,  one  day,  doubtless  to  attract  the 
attention  of  one,  of  his  gods, — for  he  was  on 
intimate,  if  terrified,  terms  with  the  deities, — he 
twanged  the  string  of  the  bow.  The  sound 
pleased  him,  whether  or  not  it  met  the  satisfaction 
of  the  god,  and  he  used  to  sit  and  twang  until 

[3] 


«»  The  Heart  of  Music 

the  very  rocks  and  heavens  must  have  grown 
weary  of  hearing. 

And  from  that  crude  and  remote  parentage, — 
crude  and  remote  even  as  our  own  prehistoric 
parentage,  rooted  far  back  there  when  the  earth 
was  yet  in  the  making,  — the  shrine  was  fashioned 
for  the  Heart  of  Music.  And  thus  it  entered; 
and  it  travelled  and  sang  down  the  ages.  For 
then  and  there  the  violin  was  born,  as  we  were 
born  in  the  first  man  thing  that  crawled  to  life 
from  the  darkness  of  primordial  confusion  and 
spoke  and  walked  upright,  looking  on  the  sun. 

Robert  Barr,  in  writing  of  a  bowman  of  old, 
makes  him  exclaim,  as  he  twangs  his  weapon 
melodiously:  "There,  my  lord,  is  a  one-stringed 
harp,  which  sings  of  sudden  death  and  nothing 
else!" 

The  thought  that  all  things  are  first  created  in 
embryo  is  no  longer  new  to  us.  We  can  under- 
stand the  principle  of  seed,  and  germ,  and  pro- 
toplasm, —  the  first  pin  point  of  life,  the  nucleus 
of  all  creation  in  a  space  too  small  for  the  naked 
eye  to  see.  So  the  rudimentary  forms  of  all 
things  are  of  interest  to  us,  and  our  philologists 
trace  laboriously  the  origin  of  words,  as  our 
geologists  wrest  the  secrets  of  the  earth's  creation 
from  sand  and  stones.      We  are  in  an  age  that 

[4] 


<  "^  In  the  Beginning  ®» 

likes  to  know  why  and  how.  And  so  it  is  a  lov- 
ing labour  to  us  to  climb  down  the  rocky  pathway 
to  the  ancientest  days  of  all  to  find  the  birthplaces 
of  those  divinities  which  have  become  the  very 
loves  of  our  hearts  in  their  fulness  of  perfection. 
Art,  literature, — whatever  be  the  winged  thing 
whose  perilous  flight  we  follow  awkwardly,  — we 
must  needs  pilgrimage  to  the  spinning-place  of 
its  cocoon,  —  or  to  the  small  corners  of  the  earth 
when  first  it  was  a  blind  caterpillar.  If  you  will, 
let  us  go  together  as  far  back  as  we  may  in  search 
of  the  first  faint  pulsations  of  the  Heart  of  Music. 
^For  the  violin  is  music's  innermost  heart. 
Soul  and  brain  and  body  we  may  find  in  organ 
thunders,  in  passionate  voices,  in  noble  har- 
monies ;  but  the  heart  is  imprisoned  for  all  time 
in  the  throbbing  wood  and  quivering  strings  of 
the  perfect  violinTj  There  are  those  who  do  not 
know  that  the  violin  is  alive,  that  it  has  nerves 
and  muscles  and  moods  and  impulses  like  anyone 
else ;  that  it  has  fits  of  temper  and  moments  of 
exaltation,  and  times  of  bitter  melancholy  and 
despair,  even  as  the  rest  of  us.  The  violin  is 
almost  as  old  as  man,  and  its  spirit  ip  blder,  for  it 
fled  somewhere  through  sky  spaces  before  it  came 
to  its  earthly  incarnation.  Sometimes,  when  it 
is  with  a  friend,  it  sings  of  the  lost  splendour 

[5] 


OC®  The  Heart  of  Music  ©X® 

among  the  stars;  then  we  say  that  the  master  was 
inspired  that  night. 

Just  what  age  the  stringed  instrument  had 
when  we  first  hear  of  it  in  ancient  Egypt  we 
know  not.  It  was  probably  thousands  of  years 
old  even  then,  for  there  are  many  wise  persons 
who  declare  that  it  had  lived  to  begin  with  in 
Asia  with  the  Chinese  and  the  Hindoos.  But 
our  records  begin  first  in  the  country  of  the 
sjihinxes  and  the  sands.  It  is  quite  possible  that 
the  reason  for  this  is  the  unequalled  fulness  of 
Egyptian  recording,  the  method  and  accuracy 
of  their  chronicling,  and  the  remarkable  quality 
of  Egyptian  art.  No  other  nation  could  have 
such  complete  records  at  so  early  a  period,  other- 
wise, perhaps,  we  should  be  beginning  our  re- 
searches in  India,  or  China,  or  even  Babylonia 
and  Phoenicia. 

There  is  much  evidence  to  suggest  that  India 
probably  was  the  true  birthplace  of  the  primitive 
stringed  instrument,  as  it  undoubtedly  was  of  the 
bowed  instrument  later.  Nevertheless,  to  Egypt 
we  must  betake  ourselves,  and  in  the  pink  and 
orange  desert  light  hear  the  story  of  how  the  old 
priests  explained  the  coming  of  the  Heart  of  Music. 


[6] 


"^ke  £yze  of  the  "WoxLd 


r~T 


"I  am  the  great  indestructible  lyre  of  the  Avhole  world,  attuning 
the  songs  of  heaven."  —  Inscription  in  ancient  Egyptian  temple. 


II. — The  Lyre  of  the  World 


i  1  OW  the  god  Thot,  corresponding  to  the  Greek 
Hermes  and  the  Roman  Mercury,  walked  one  day 
alons'  the  sun-baked  banks  of  the  river  Nile,  when 
the  world  was  yet  in  its  first  sublime  childhood 
and  divinities  were  human.  It  was  in  the  dry 
season,  when  there  was  no  dampness  and  no 
flooding  of  the  river.  Many  creatures  lay  dead 
or  dying  under  the  sun,  and  the  water,  too,  had 
a  song  burden  of  death  and  decay.  There  was  a 
great  stillness  on  all  things ,  a  stillness  that  seemed 
to  stretch  through  all  the  reaches  of  the  world, 
and  the  winds  had  no  more  breath  to  blow. 

The  god  Thot,  walking  by  the  river  Nile  and 
musing  in  god  fashion  on  the  earth  and  the  earth 
folk,  making  no  sound  on  the  soft  sand  as  he 
strode  through  the  silent  heat,  touched  something 
with  his  foot  as  he  passed.  A  faint,  sweet  sound 
stirred  the  hush,  and  the  god  Thot  paused,  asking 
of  himself  what  thing  had  spoken  out  of  the 
nothingness,  making  joy  in  the  ears  like  rare  food 
in  the  mouth.  For  until  then  music  had  not 
been  ;  even  the  god  Thot  had  not  thought  of 
inventing  it.      Then,    marvelling   greatly   at    the 

[9] 


«^  The  Heart  of  Music  KKM 

sweetness  that  had  moved  the  air,  the  god  Thot 
looked  down.  And  all  that  he  saw  was  a  dead 
tortoise  lying  on  the  sand.  There  in  the  heat  it 
lay,  a  dry  and  empty  shell,  with  only  the  sinews 
left  of  all  its  living  flesh.  They  were  stretched 
hard  and  tight  across  the  hollow  shell,  the  whole 
burning  dry  under  the  sun. 

Then  the  god  Thot  said,  "Is  it  this  dead  thing 
that  has  made  the  sweetness  in  my  ears?"  And 
he  put  out  his  foot  once  more  and  touched  it. 
And  again  the  breath  of  loveliness  came  and 
passed,  and  the  heart  of  Thot  was  moved,  and 
he  considered  gently  the  dead  tortoise  that  had 
made  the  first  music  of  the  world.  And  he  said, 
"  Oh,  miracle  vouchsafed  to  gods  as  well  as  men! 
This  humble  thing,  the  shell  of  one  so  lowly 
and  unpraised,  has  brought  a  new  glory  to  the 
earth.  So  ugliness  becomes  beauty!"  said  the 
god  Thot.  Then  he  picked  up  the  tortoise-shell, 
and  it  became,  in  his  hands,  a  lyre  such  as  gods 
and  spirits  play,  and  he  touched  it  repeatedly, 
making  wonderful  music  that  the  world  heard 
and  worshipped.  And  all  the  other  gods  said, 
' '  This  new  thing  born  into  the  world  shall  belong 
first  to  us  the  Immortals."  So  Pthah,  the  Fire 
God,  had  a  likeness  of  himself  made  in  the  temple 
at  Dakkah,  playing  the  lyre ;  and  Osiris,  the  Great 

[10] 


®»  The  Lyre  of  the  World  «^ 

One,  made  himself  the  patron  of  the  new  thing 
which  they  called  Music ;  and  the  priests  wor- 
shipped them  with  the  sounding  of  lyres  and 
the  chanting  of  voices.  And  Isis,  the  mother 
of  all,  spoke,  saying  the  word  that  should  be  in- 
scribed on  the  temples  of  the  faithful :  "I  am 
the  great  indestructible  lyre  of  the  whole  world, 
attuning  the  songs  of  heaven.  " 

That  was  the  ancient  story  of  the  coming  of  the 
Heart  of  Music.  The  priests  told  it  to  curious 
or  awed  inquirers  thousands  of  years  ago  beside 
the  Nile,  when  the  heat  was  on  the  land  and 
many  tortoises  and  other  creatures  lay  dead  in  the 
dry-baked  mud. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  know  that  the  lyre  grew 
with  most  laborious  slowness  from  a  piece  of 
sonorous  wood,  beaten  with  a  stick  or  a  bit  of 
metal,  called  a  syrinx  or  harmonicon.  Finger- 
holes  were  introduced  to  alter  the  tone,  and  finally 
strings ;  first,  no  doubt,  as  an  experiment.  They 
were  of  animals'  sinews  or  plant  fibres  to  begin 
with,  but  the  Egyptians  quickly  substituted  metal 
wires  and  silk  cords.  With  plectra  of  wood  or 
bone  with  which  to  pick  the  strings,  and  a  finger- 
board or  neck  to  govern  the  length  of  strings  and 
pitch  of  tones,  the  lyre  became  a  lute,  known 
as  a  tebouni,  tamboura,  and  nebel  in  its  various 

["] 


«;®  Thje  Heart  of  Music  ®x® 

forms,  and  in  one  variant  was  called  the  Nefru 
(Nefer,  Nofre,  or  Nef),  which  means  ' '  The  Good.  " 
But  the  nefru  was  less  the  instrument  of  mysticism 
and  religion  than  the  lyre  or  harp.  These  great 
instruments  became  inseparable  from  the  sacred 
rites  of  the  temples,  though  the  nefru  was  accepted 
in  lighter  and  more  secular  connection,  and  played 
at  concerts.  The  lyre  was  most  symbolic  in  its 
form  and  tuning.  It  began  with  one  string,  but 
soon  was  strung  with  three, —  probably  E,  F,  and 
G, — named  for  the  three  seasons  of  the  Egyptian 
year,  which  of  course  is  divided  into  sections  of 
four  months  each.  The  highest  string  was 
named  spring,  the  middle  one  summer,  and  the 
lowest  winter.  Apollodorus  tells  of  the  symboli-^ 
cal  meaning  of  the  strings,  as  well  as  the  legend 
concerning  the  tortoise.  He  mentions  that  the 
incident  happened  in  the  year  of  the  luorld  2000 ! 

George  Rawlinson  describes  Egypt  in  a  singu- 
larly poetical  way,  seeming  to  create  at  once  an 
atmosphere  of  beauty  by  the  charming  imagery 
and  metaphor  of  which  he  makes  use  : 

' '  In  shape  Egypt  is  like  a  lily  with  a  curved 
stem.  A  broad  blossom  terminates  it  at  its  upper 
end;  a  button  of  a  bud  projects  from  its  stalk  a 
little  below  the  blossom  and  on  the  left-hand  side. 
The  broad  blossom  is  the  Delta,  extending  from 

[12] 


<K>  The  Lyre  of  the  World  <» 

Aboosis  to  Tiiieh,  a  direct  distance  of  i8o  miles, 
which  the  projection  of  the  coast  —  the  peaceful 
swell  of  the  petals  —  enlarges  to  2  3o.  The  bud 
is  the  Fayoum,  a  natural  depression  in  the  hills 
that  shut  in  the  Nile  Valley  on  the  west.  .  .  . 
The  long  stalk  of  the  lily  is  the  Nile  Valley  itself, 
which  is  a  ravine  scooped  in  the  body  for  700  miles 
from  the  first  cataract  to  the  apex  of  the  Delta, 
sometimes  not  more  than  a  mile  broad,  never 
more  than  eight  or  ten  miles.  " 

Herodotus  calls  Egypt  the  "  Gift  of  the  Nile," 
and  indeed  it  is  said  that  the  present  founda- 
tion of  the  land  was  formed  by  the  mud  and  sedi- 
ment left  by  the  yearly  floods  of  the  river.  This 
mud  and  sediment,  the  slime  and  dregs  of  a 
great  African  river,  are  what  have  gone  to  form 
Rawlinson's  exquisite  lily,  blossom,  bud,  and  stalk. 

The  almost  magical  element  in  this  accumulation 
of  the  materials  for  a  country  and  a  nation  out 
of  nothing  appeals  to  us  to-day  ;  how  much  more 
insistently  it  must  have  struck  the  imaginations 
of  the  early  Egyptians  themselves.  No  wonder 
they  worshipped  the  great  stream  to  which  they 
owed  the  very  earth  they  stood  on,  if  not,  as  they 
doubtless  argued,  their  actual  being. 

The  mysticism  of  the  Orient  was  never  so 
marked  as  in  Egypt.      There  it  reached  a  dignity 

[i3] 


C®>  The  Heart  of  Music  «^ 

of  mystery  and  a  splendour  of  symbolism  which 
haunts  the  land  still,  like  the  ghosts  of  its  dead. 
Not  emptily  Avas  it  written  above  the  Temple 
of  Sais,  "  I  am  all  that  is,  that  was,  and  that  will 
be;  no  mortal  has  lifted  my  veil."  Not  Avithout 
reason  does  the  Sphinx  stand,  an  eternal  question 
that  no  man  may  ansAver.  Not  only  in  the  great, 
but  in  the  little  things,  Egypt,  the  most  civilised 
of  nations,  the  most  communicative  of  chroniclers, 
has  remained  dumb.  \^  e  read  her  papyri,  study 
her  tombs  and  temples,  images  and  hieroglyphics, 
see  the  exquisite  remnants  of  her  beautiful  daily 
life,  and  pause,  an  unAvorded  as  an  unansAvered 
question  on  our  lips.  No  man  Avill  ever  knoAv 
Avhat  Egypt  Avas  ;  no  mortal  has  lifted  her  veil. 
Therefore  the  part  her  music  played  is  shrouded 
in  a  mystery  in  keeping  aa  ith  her  usual  secretive 
habit  of  mind.  Something  we  may  knoAv  of  its 
actual  use  and  scope,  but  its  inner,  deeper  sym- 
bolism—  no  one  knows  that  but  the  dead  gods 
and  the  violin.  For  its  ancestors  learned  the 
secret  in  pagan  celebrations  at  Giseh  and  Dakkah 
thousands  of  years  before  Christ  came. 

The  Egyptians  of  course  Avere,  first  and  fore- 
most, pantheists.  In  the  priests  this  pantheism 
was  a  dignified  and  consecrated  thing,  albeit  its 
observances  might  shock  the  Occidental  sensibilities 

[14] 


srx®  The  Lyre  of  the  World  «:« 

at  times.  But  the  deification  of  nature  in  all  its 
works  was  inevitably  corrupted  later  on  in  the 
light  and  vulgar  mind  and  life,  and  what  the  priests 
worshipped  in  the  fear  of  the  gods  the  youth 
of  Egypt  revelled  in  with  rank  sensualism.  In 
both  these  conflicting  yet  kindred  manifestations 
of  a  great  national  philosophy,  the  stringed  in- 
strument played  a  rarely  important  part.  In  the 
big  temples,  where  the  light  was  faint  and  the 
incense  heavy,  the  lyres  and  harps  echoed  with 
slow,  monotonous  cadences.  The  priestesses, 
bearing  the  pantheistically  symbolical  sistra, 
whirled  before  the  great  altars ;  the  deification 
of  nature  rose  in  a  surge  of  emotion  that  beat 
through  the  roofs  of  the  temples  and  stormed  the 
very  fire-heart  of  the  sun.  Flowers  were  strewn, 
and  died  under  the  pressure  of  swift  feet,  and 
all  the  while  the  echoes  of  the  slowly  swept  strings 
mounted  to  the  ears  of  the  gods.  "They  have 
begun  to  sing  unto  thee  upon  the  harp,"  says  an 
old  Egyptian  hymn  ;  ' '  they  sing  unto  thee,  keeping 
time  with  their  hands." 

In  private  feasts  the  musicians  were  the  chief 
feature  of  the  entertainments.  The  great  ladies 
of  old  Egypt  gave  musical  entertainments  that  were 
almost  concerts.  The  harpists  and  lyrists  played 
before  and  after  the  banquet,  occasionally  giving 

[i5] 


<K^  The  Heart  of  Music  <>:> 

place  to  their  companion  performers  on  the  pro- 
gramme, —  the  athletes  and  gymnasts,  whom  the 
Egyptians  liked  to  watch. 

The  higher  class  Egyptians  —  of  the  very  early 
dynasties — were  cultivated,  dignified  people,  with 
fine  mental  and  moral  ideas,  and  but  little  of  the 
depravity  and  unrestraint  of  the  later  period.  At 
this  time  music  was  an  art  that  was  respected  and 
honoured.  The  priests  and  acolytes,  with  shaven 
heads,  played  on  harps  and  lyres  themselves,  and 
kings  deigned  to  learn  the  gentle  art  of  making 
stringed  music. 

There  is  a  Greek  legend  that  the  monarch 
Amphion  built  the  Avails  of  Thebes  by  the  sound 
of  his  lyre.  And  that  legend,  by  the  by,  gives 
us  a  very  interesting  point,  first  advanced  by  Mr. 
Clarke,  I  think,  concerning  the  use  of  stringed 
instruments  in  their  very  earliest  days,  in  Egypt 
as  much  if  not  more  than  in  Greece.  Music 
was  held  to  be  so  great  and  inspiring  a  power 
that  almost  all  the  public  Avork  by  the  enormous 
bands  of  slaves  and  labourers  was  accompanied 
by  singing  and  playing.  The  workmen  them- 
selves sang  rhythmically,  monotonously  at  times, 
finding  help  apparently  in  the  swing  of  the 
measures,  even  as  sailors  to-day  seem  to  pull 
harder  on  the  rope  to  a  Yo  heave  ho  !      A  charac- 

[i6] 


erX^  The  Lyre  of  the  World  <)&> 

teristic  song  of  the  Egyptian  labourers  was  this 
reiterative  bit : 

"  Thrash  ye  for  yourselves. 
Thrash  ye  for  yourselves,  O  oxen, 
Thrash  ye. 

Thrash  ye  for  yourselves, 
The  straw  which  is  yours. 
The  corn  which  is  your  masters, 
Thrash  ye  for  yourselves  !  " 

When  the  work  became  hard  and  heavy  and 
breath  had  to  be  held  fast  for  the  bitter  biting 
effort  of  stone-carrying  or  masonry,  they  sang  no 
more.  Then  bands  of  musicians  began  to  play, 
—  first  the  lyres  and  harps,  tenderly,  cajolingly; 
then  the  drums  and  cymbals,  inspiringly;  then 
the  nefrus,  softly  and  gaily.  And  it  was  said  that 
the  work  moved  faster  to  the  music,  and  the  great 
stone  wonders  grew  and  grew.  So  it  is  indeed 
possible,  as  Mr.  Clarke  says,  that  the  walls  of 
Thebes  were  built  to  the  music  of  the  lyre.  A 
strange  thought,  that  the  Temple  of  Susa  may 
represent  a  succession  of  harp  tones,  and  that  the 
Great  Pyramid  rose  to  a  song. 

Plato  speaks  of  the  theory  of  the  ancient  Egyp- 
tians that  beauty  should  be  the  guiding  in- 
fluence in  the  lives  of  young  people,  not  only 
beauty  of  line  but  beauty  of  thought.  He  says 
that  they  believed  that  ' '  nothing  but  beautiful 
forms  and  fine  music  should  be  admitted  to  the 

[17] 


^X>  The  Heart  of  Music  «^ 

assemblies  of  young  people . ' '  This  theory  brought 
the  stringed  instrument  to  a  post  of  great  dignity 
for  a  time,  and  it  accompanied  all  the  great  festi- 
vals given  by  the  educated  classes. 

The  Egyptian  feasts  of  this  period — the  third 
and  fourth  dynasties  —  w^ere  very  different  from 
the  orgies  that  grew  nationally  characteristic  in  the 
mad  later  days  of  the  hot-blooded  Ptolemies.  In 
an  era  when  the  work  of  every  man's  life  was  the 
construction  of  his  tomb  and  the  composition  of 
his  own  laudatory  epitaph,  one  could  only  expect 
a  certain  sobriety,  even  in  pleasure. 

The  banquets  described  by  the  ancients  sound 
miracles  of  deportment  and  innocence.  The 
guests  having  arrived,  servants  placed  about  the 
neck  of  each  a  garland  of  flowers,  and  upon  each 
head  a  lotus  flower,  as  symbolical  of  the  pleasure 
of  the  host  in  receiving  them.  Then  they  were 
seated  in  the  banqueting  hall,  all  married  couples 
too^ether,  and  the  unmarried  men  and  women 
discreetly  separated.  In  token  of  homage,  ser- 
vants touched  the  head  of  each  person  with  per- 
fumed ointment,  and  then  set  before  them  little 
tables  loaded  with  meat  and  fruit  and  small  cakes. 
Wine  cups  were  passed  around,  and  music  was 
played  in  subdued  tones,  that  the  conversation 
might  not  be  disturbed  nor  made  difficult. 

[i8] 


««?  The  Lyre  of  the  World  ®>(> 

The  Egyptian  women  of  rank  were  all  highly 
educated  and  helped  their  husbands  in  their  public 
life,  and  these  musical  feasts  were  often  the  scenes 
of  serious  discussion  and  interesting  debat.es. 
When  the  banquet  was  over  the  tables  were 
removed  and  the  regular  performance  of  the  even- 
inof  beofan.  After  the  athletes  had  wrestled  and 
the  gymnasts  had  shown  their  skill,  the  concert 
commenced,  —  the  musicians  playing  until  they 
could  play  no  more,  and  the  audience  listening 
with  critical  pleasure. 

These  were  the  good  days  of  Egypt,  before  her 
beautiful  aestheticism  and  nature  worship  brought 
her  low  with  one  of  those  pendulum  swings  which 
make  or  unmake  nations. 

The  almost  inconceivable  antiquitjy  of  the 
stringed  instrument  is  shown  by  a  picture  of  a 
harp  in  the  tomb  at  Gyseh,  of  the  date  4976  b.c. 
In  the  time  of  Beni-Hassan,  the  first  Pharaoh,  in 
3892  B.C.,  when  the  scale  of  music  was  already 
seven  notes,  the  priests  called  them  "The  Seven 
Sacred  Sounds  "  and  ' '  The  Seven  Sounding  Tones 
Praising  The  Great  God,"  who  was  Beni-Hassan. 
But  it  was  not  until  the  reign  of  Rameses  III  of 
the  twelfth  dynasty — 1 260- 12 84  e.g.  —  that  the 
stringed  instrument,  as  chiefly  represented  by 
the  harp,  reached  its  height  in  Egyptian  history. 

[19] 


«»  The  Heart  of  Music  <» 

At  that  time  it  was  one  of  the  most  beautiful  in- 
struments ever  made;  whole  fortunes  were  spent 
on  one  alone,  for  each  was  beautifully  carved  and 
ornamented  with  the  figures  of  gods,  goddesses, 
sphinxes,  and  animals,  and  inlaid  with  gold,  silver, 
ivory,  tortoise-shell,  and  mother-of-pearl.  Some- 
times parts  of  the  frame  were  bound  in  velvet  and 
morocco  and  decorated  with  all  manner  of  vivid 
colours,  —  purple,  crimson,  arid  green.  The 
pictures  of  harps  found  at  Thebes  by  Mr.  Bruce 
were  marvellously  detailed  and  showed  the  in- 
struments to  have  been  barely  less  than  six  and 
a  half  feet  high,  with  twenty-six  strings. 
The  strings  of  nearly  all  the  Egyptian  harps  were 
made  of  the  intestines  of  camels.  The  famous 
semicircular  harp,  also  discovered  at  Thebes,  was 
in  a  perfect  state  of  preservation.  It  had  a  frame 
covered  with  heavy  red  leather,  and  twenty  strings; 
and  it  still  vibrated  and  gave  forth  sounds  when 
touched ! 

These  large  harps,  of  course,  were  played 
standing  up;  others,  with  slender  iron  rests  to 
support  them,  could  be  played  sitting  down,  and 
one  lovely,  graceful  curved  instrument  was  always 
played  with  the  musician  kneeling  beside  it,  as 
though  in  adoration  of  its  beautiful  form  and  more 
beautiful  tone.      Nearly  all  the  harps  were  slightly 

[20] 


®»  The  Lyre  of  the  World  <jOa 

curved  in  shape,  for  the  Egyptians  loved  flow^ing 
lines,  and  perhaps  had  further  mastered  the  knowl- 
edge that  angles  do  not  give  the  fullest  vibration 
of  tone.  One  of  the  little  lyres  was  triangular, 
however,  and  was  called  the  trigonon.  The  god 
Pthah  is  represented  as  playing  upon  this  sort  of 
an  instrument.  Most  of  these  lyres  seem  to  have 
belonged  to  an  earlier  era  and  more  primitive 
musical  knowledge.  Rousseau  insisted  that  the 
Egyptians  had  a  bow  instrument,  but  as  there  is 
no  record  of  any  kind  to  substantiate  his  theory, 
it  is  fairly  safe  to  leave  it  uncredited.  Of  course 
the  instrument  which  Rousseau  thought  was 
played  with  a  bow  must  have  been  the  form  of 
tamboura  known  as  the  nefru,  which  does  faintly 
resemble  the  general  line  and  character  of  our 
violin .  Rut  according  to  the  records  it  was  played 
by  a  plectrum. 

Nearly  all  Eastern  instruments  of  tlhe  lyre 
character  were  made  out  of  sycamore,  in  cylin- 
drical form,  or,  in  some  Oriental  countries,  of 
hollo  wed-out  gourds  or  cocoanuts,  highly  polished 
and  with  the  top  covered  with  dried  skin  or  very 
thin  and  fine-grained  satin  wood.  The  neck  was 
always  very  long  and  slender  and  the  number  of 
strings  three,  two,  or  even  one.  Some  of  the 
Egyptian  tambouras,  or  lutes,  had  great  numbers 

[21] 


<¥>  The  Heart  of  Music  <» 

of  frets,  making  a  vast  variety  of  tones  possible, 
even  on  these  feiv  strings.  The  nefru,  harp, 
and  lyre  were  usually  played  together,  with  cym- 
bals, drums,  and,  in  the  temple  celebrations,  sistra. 
There  Avere  an  enormous  number  of  musical  in- 
struments, some  of  them  of  curious  shape  and 
sharp  tone,  that  were  played  in  all  sorts  of  strange 
ways, —  by  shaking,  striking,  and  scraping.  The 
harp  and  lyre  seem  to  have  been  the  only  instru- 
ments that  were  not  relegated  to  professionals,  and 
even  the  harp  and  lyre  fell  into  disrepute  with  the 
general  decadence  of  Egypt. 

The  professional  musicians  were  all  of  the  lowest 
classes  in  Egypt,  —  a  class  much  lower  than  that 
of  servants.  Theirs  was  a  hereditary  ofEce,  — 
like  all  the  professions  and  trades  of  Egypt.  Son 
succeeded  to  father  inevitably,  and  the  descendants 
of  a  musician  were  always  musicians,  however 
much  they  might  wish  to  change  their  estate  or 
work.  This  immutable  custom  permitted  no 
margin  for  personality  or  inclination;  but  the 
Egyptians  did  not  believe  in  any  mingling  of  classes 
or  broadening  of  conventions,  and  apparently  it 
never  occurred  to  the  hereditary  artisans,  cooks, 
metal  Avorkers,  grain-grinders  and  scribes,  weavers 
and  buffoons,  gymnasts  and  musicians,  to  rebel 
against  the  established  order  of  things. 

[22] 


<M>  The  Lyre  of  the  World   ®:» 

There  was  one  class  of  musicians,  however,  who 
were  honoured, — those  who  played  in  the  temples. 
It  was  only  in  the  very  early  days  that  the  priests 
themselves  monopolised  the  lyre  and  harp,  and 
every  temple  had  its  "  Sacred  Musicians,"  known 
as  "  The  Minstrels  of  the  Gods."  This  is  one  of 
the  old  pantheistic  songs,  worshipping  the  Nile, 
which  the  priests  used  to  chant  in  the  dry  season 
to  the  accompaniment  of  the  harps  and  flutes  and 
lyres  and  nefru: 

"Incline  thy  face,  O  Nile, 
Coming  safe  out  of  the  land. 
Vivifying  Egypt ! 

Hiding  his  dark  sources  from  the  light, 
Ordering  his  sources  ; 

The  streams  of  his  bed  are  made  by  the  sun, 
To  give  life  to  all  animals, 
To  water  the  lands  which  are  destitute. 
Coming  all  along  the  heaven. 
Loving  fragrance,  offering  grain, 
Rendering  verdant  every  sacred  place  of  Ptha." 

The  Egyptian  priests  combined  music  and  as- 
tronomy in  their  mysterious  religion.  Strings 
were  tuned  to  planets,  and  the  signs  of  the  zodiac 
were  gods.  We  have  already  heard  of  the  ' '  Seven 
Great  Tones  "  of  the  Egyptian  scale.  They  rep- 
resented the  planets  known  to  us  as  the  Sun,  the 
Moon,  Mercury,  Saturn,  Jupiter,  Mars,  and  Venus. 
They  were  also  the  seven  days  of  the  week. 

[23] 


«(>(>  The  Heart  of  Music  «> 

Different  keys  represented  dififerent  gods,  and 
varying  combinations  of  tones  were  varying  con- 
stellations. So  intricate  and  interdependent  was 
this  extraordinary  network  of  music,  philosophy, 
religion,  astrology,  astronomy,  and  pantheism  that 
it  is  impossible  for  the  modern  Occidental  brain 
to  even  reach  the  basic  principles  of  the  system. 
Undoubtedly  itvastly  influenced  the  stringed  music 
of  the  time,  and  perhaps  even  the  forms  and  general 
character  of  the  instruments  themselves. 

In  the  primitive  instruments  there  was  no  system 
of  tuning.  The  tension  of  the  strings  was  regu- 
lated by  a  bar  at  the  upper  end  of  the  instrument. 
This  bar  was  set  at  an  angle,  and  the  strings  tied 
around  it  so  that  by  sliding  the  strings  up  or  down 
the  bar  they  could  be  made  tight  or  loose  as  the 
player  willed,  and  thus  the  depth  of  tone  fairly 
well  regulated. 

The  mystic  and  solemn  faith  of  early  Egypt 
crashed  into  a  chaos  of  decadence  in  3i5  e.g., 
after  her  conquest  by  Cambyses.  From  that 
time  on  her  downfall  was  a  thing  doomed.  The 
wild  blood  of  the  Ptolemies  wasted  her  ancient 
dignity;  her  own  superb  passions  corrupted 
her;  her  own  people  overthrew  her.  As  the 
magnificent  freedom  and  fire  of  the  old  pan- 
theism became  license  and  sin,  so  did  her  old 

[24] 


«a  The  Lyre  of  the  World  <» 

music,  sacred  to  the  gods  and  to  high  uses,  become 
a  thing  of  vileness  and  shame.  The  stringed  in- 
struments beloved  by  the  older  Egyptians  fell  into 
the  hands  of  roisterers  and  idlers,  and  the  sacred 
sistrum  was  used  as  the  accompaniment  to 
shameless  dances.  Voluptuousness  instead  of 
aestheticism,  sensuality  instead  of  nature  worship, 
indecency  instead  of  passion,  held  Egypt  in  their 
great  grip;  and  the  gods  hid  their  faces  before 
the  devastation  of  a  nation's  soul.  So  it  was  that 
the  stringed  instrument  fell  into  evil  company 
and  forgot  its  old  slow  melodies  that  the  gods 
had  loved. 

Then  it  was,  say  the  old  priestly  chronicles, 
that  Osiris,  the  Great  One,  forbade  any  players  of 
harps  or  lyres  and  any  singers  of  songs  to  enter 
his  temples,  banishing  music  from  his  altars  and 
musicians  from  his  favour.  Then  there  were 
only  women  who  played  and  sang  —  dancing- 
girls  and  naked  slaves,  and  those  others  who 
wore  many  ornaments  and  strange  scents.  And 
the  wise  men  of  Egypt,  sorrowing,  proclaimed 
that  he  who  would  be  strong  and  clean  must 
forswear  music.  Fathers  forbade  their  sons  and 
daughters  to  learn  to  sing,  and  harps  and  tam- 
bouras  were  broken  because  their  only  message 
now  was  Sin. 

[25] 


<^>  The  Heart  of  Music  «® 

And  no  man  spoke  again  of  the  Lyre  of  the 
World,  for  now  the  Lyre  of  the  World  was  tuned 
to  lust  and  shame  and  the  madness  of  life. 

In  a  moment  of  too  bitter  sight  the  priests  of 
the  old  gods  made  a  song  that  cried  out  against 
the  desecrations  of  their  shrines: 

"  The  cattle  are  driven  mad,  — 
Mad  —  mad  —  mad  ! 
And  all  the  world,  hoth  great  and  small,  are  in  torment." 


[.6] 


^lie  (^taz  of  ^hame 


*'  And  they  called  her  Ashtart  which  means  Star,  and  added  thereto 
the  vowels  of  Bosheth,  which,  in  the  Massoretic  text,  signifies  Shame." 
—  Ancient  Chronicle  of  Assyria. 


III. — The  Star  of  Shame 


loHE  stood  high  up  on  gold  and  silver  altars 
and  always  smiled, — that  strange,  cruel  smile  of 
the  East.  Her  temples  were  roofed  with  cedar 
from  the  groves  of  Mount  Lebanon;  her  priests 
wore  rich  raiment  and  preached  a  cult  of  the 
senses.  Jewels  flamed  about  her  shrines,  and  in 
the  perfumed  dusk  new  blood  showed  crimson 
upon  the  floors,  lit  by  the  fire  of  sacrifice.  Voices 
screamed  in  agony,  but  the  clash  of  cymbals 
drowned  them;  and  still  she  smiled,  with  slim 
hands  upon  her  bosom  and  half-shut,  greedy  eyes. 

The  Heart  of  Music  beat  to  a  mad  tune  in  those 
days,  for  it  was  the  servant  of  the  goddess  Ash- 
toroth.  Most  inconsiderable  was  its  dwelling- 
place, —  the  heart, —  for  no  longer  did  it  inhabit 
tall,  beautiful  harps  whereon  priests  in  white  linen 
played  to  please  Osiris ;  it  throbbed  as  best  it  might 
in  little  lyres  that  accompanied  the  terrible  cere- 
monies of  the  worship  of  the  Star  of  Shame,  as 
men  called  her  even  then. 

Sometimes  knoAvn  as  Astarte,  sometimes  as 
Ashtar,  Istar,  and  in  at  least  a  few  texts  as 
Melitta  and  Nana,  she  was  adored  by  the  people 

[29] 


0<:®  The  Heart  of  Music  «> 

of  nearly  all  the  ancient  monarchies.  There  are 
records  to  show  that  to  begin  with  she  was  a  pure 
and  beneficent  goddess,  a  sort  of  Juno  and  Geres 
in  one,  the  queen  of  the  heavens  and  the  spirit 
of  fruitfulness.  But  the  goddess  beloved  by  the 
Assyrians,  Phoenicians,  and  Babylonians  was  very 
far  from  being  that  gracious  deity.  Perhaps  it 
was  when  she  became  typical  of  all  degradation 
and  cruelty  that  the  scribes  wrote  of  her,  "and 
added  thereto  the  vowels  of  Bosheth,  which  sig- 
nifies Shame."  In  the  religion  of  all  the  nations 
that  played  out  their  magnificent  destinies  in  the 
centuries  before  Christ,  Ashtoroth  had  a  place. 
Even  in  Egypt  they  built  a  temple  to  her,  though 
she  was  not  of  the  old  Egyptian  gods.  Everything 
about  her  appealed  to,  as  it  was  the  outcome  of, 
a  spirit  much  baser  and  gayer,  at  once  more  brutal 
and  more  brilliant  than  that  of  Egypt.  Ashtoroth 
was  not  only  the  synonym  of  license  and  sen- 
suality, but  also  of  the  most  inconceivable  and 
merciless  cruelty  that  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
Men  and  women  were  tortured  —  for  the  sake  of 
Ashtoroth;  little  children  were  offered  up  as 
sacrifices  —  to  satisfy  Ashtoroth;  great  bands  of 
the  frantic  populace  scourged  themselves  with 
whips  and  tore  their  flesh  with  knives  and 
swords,  driven  mad  by  the  worship  of  Ashtoroth, 
[3o] 


»[»  The  Star  of  Shame   ^» 

— Ashtoroth,  the  silent,  the  smihng,  the  insatiable, 
the  monstrous. 

Like  a  pillar  of  fire  she  blazed  throughout 
Ghaldea  and  Assyria,  Babylonia  and  Phoenicia. 
Like  a  scarlet  flame,  many  years  later,  she  entered 
Judea,  when,  according  to  old  tales,  Princess 
Jezebel,  the  daughter  of  Eth-baal,  King  of  Tyre, 
journeyed  there.  King  Solomon  built  a  temple 
in  her  honour,  and  she  smiled  havoc  upon  the 
Hebrew  people  from  her  terrible  altar. 

And  in  all  her  rites,  in  all  her  rule,  in  all  her 
intricate,  mighty  ways  of  darkness,  sounded  al- 
ways the  voice  of  lyre  and  harp,  and  other  stringed 
instruments  akin  to  those  played  by  the  Egyptians. 
The  small  harp  of  the  Assyrians  was  called  the 
kinnor;  a  small  stringed  instrument  beloved  in 
Babylon  was  the  sambouca,  or  sabecha,  a  little 
trigonon  of  four  strings,  made  to  accompany 
women's  voices.  In  Lydia  was  the  mysterious 
stringed  magadis.  "Oh,  Leucaspis,  I  sing  in 
making  sound  my  Lydian  magadis  of  twenty 
strings!  "  In  Sidon  they  played  the  nebel,  which 
was  much  like  the  Egyptian  nofre;  we  have  read 
of  "  the  strings  of  the  sonorous  Sidonian  nebel." 
In  Phoenicia  they  had  the  sambuka  also. 

The  Assyrian  harps  were  chromatically  tuned, 
and  in  very  early  days  they  were  large  and  beauti- 

[3i] 


«>  The  Heart  of  Music  ^X> 

fully  made,  like  those  of  Egypt;  but  these  instru- 
ments speedily  fell  into  disfavour,  giving  place  to 
the  lyre,  which  could  be  carried  through  the  streets . 
All  the  famous  old  cities  —  Babylon,  Nineveh, 
Tyre,  Sidon,  and  the  rest  —  w^ere  full  of  men 
and  women  who  ran  playing  and  singing  under 
the  sunshine  or  moonlight,  driving  themselves 
half  mad  with  intoxicating  music.  Music  seems 
to  have  been  a  tremendous  factor  in  the  emotional 
and  unbridled  lives  of  these  ancient  peoples  — 
above  all,  the  Phoenicians. 

We  remember  the  tragedy  of  the  picture 
sketched  by  Isaiah  (xxiii)  in  his  arraignment  of 
Tyre:  "After  seventy  years  shall  Tyre  sing  like  a 
harlot;  take  a  harp,  go  about  the  city,  thou  harlot 
that  hast  been  forgotten;  make  sweet  melody,  sing 
many  songs,  that  thou  mayest  be  remembered." 

It  has  been  said  that  the  religious  fanatics  used 
to  rush  half  mad  through  the  streets,  singing, 
playing,  and  mutilating  themselves.  To  add  to 
the  riotous  noise  of  cymbals,  harps,  and  reed  in- 
struments, the  women  had  a  peculiar  shrill  trill 
which  they  made  by  clapping  their  fingers  rhyth- 
mically upon  their  mouths  and  crying  a  very  high 
reiterated  note.  This  curious  tremolo  is  practised 
still  among  the  singing  women  of  Syria,  Persia, 
and  Arabia. 

[32] 


«CO»  The  Star  of  Shame  ©Xi» 

The  Chaldeans,  albeit  they  were  all  half  crazed 
by  devil  worship  and  superstition,  more  closely 
resembled  Egypt  in  certain  religious  forms  and 
philosophic  theories.  They  lent  their  music  a 
certain  fantastic  dignity,  and  used  their  sambuka 
to  accompany  some  of  their  strange  chants  and 
incantations.  They  had  one  song  of  exorcism, 
purposing  to  drive  away  the  Moskim,  —  demons 
of  the  abyss,  or  world  of  the  dead,  —  which  was 
accompanied  by  the  lyre  and  harp.  It  was  as 
follows: 

"  They  are  seven  1    They  are  seven  I 
Seven  they  are  in  the  depths  of  the  ocean, 
Seven  they  are,  disturbers  of  the  face  of  heaven. 
They  arise  from  the  depths  of  the  ocean. 
From  hidden  lurking-places ; 
They  spread  like  snares. 
Male  they  are  not,  female  they  are  not ; 
Wives  they  have  not,  children  are  not  born  to  them. 
Order  they  know  not,  nor  beneficence ; 
Prayers  nor  supplications  they  hear  not. 
Vermin  conceived  in  the  womb  of  the  mountains, 
Foes  of  fea ! 

They  are  the  throne-bearers  of  the  gods, 
But  they  crouch  in  the  roads 
And  bring  danger. 
Fiends  1  Fiends  !  Fiends  1 
They  are  seven  I  Seven  they  are  !  " 

The  Chaldeans,  like  the  Egyptians,  invested  the 
strings  of  their  instruments  and  the  different  tones 
and  intervals  in  music  with  the  characters    of 

[33] 


«®  The  Heart  of  Music  ®C®> 

seasons,  days,  hours,  planets,  and  zodiacal  signs. 
They  had  one  curious  fashion  of  symbolising 
spring's  relation  to  autumn,  winter's  to  summer, 
by  the  respective  intervals  of  a  fourth,  a  fifth,  and 
an  octave. 

The  Assyrians  —  their  power  swept  upward  in 
i2  5o  B.C.,  when  they  conquered  Babylon  —  were 
men  of  blood  and  lust,  well  stocked  with  sinews, 
but  wasting  no  mercy.  Glory  was  their 
passion,  passion  their  glory.  War  was  their  life, 
life  their  war.  They  laughed  at  pain,  yet  agonised 
for  the  sake  of  joy.  Their  pride  was  in  that  they 
were  shameless,  but  their  deity  was  the  Star  of 
Shame. 

The  spirit  of  the  Assyrians  is  shown  in  this 
proud  and  boastful  inscription  upon  one  ancient 
hero's  grave: 

"The  men,  young  and  old,  I  took  prisoners. 
Of  some  I  cut  off  the  feet  and  hands;  of  others 
I  cut  off  the  noses,  ears,  and  lips.  Of  the  young 
men's  ears  I  made  a  heap;  of  the  old  men's  heads 
I  built  a  tower.  The  male  children  and  the 
female  children  I  burned  in  the  flames." 

The  Assyrian  monarchs  were  violently  despotic 
and  demanded  that  all  things  should  exist  but 
to  serve  their  greatness.  Music,  the  beloved  of 
Ashtoroth,  was  also  the  handmaid  of  kings. 

[34] 


^>:>  The  Star  of  Shame  <^^ 

The  harp  and  nebel  and  lyre  were  used  to  cele- 
brate the  success  of  warriors  and  the  joys  of 
rulers  In  times  of  peace.  On  the  ruined  walls  of 
Sennacherib's  palace  at  Nineveh  are  still  to  be  seen 
the  representation  of  men  and  women  in  great 
masses  welcoming  him,  after  a  triumphant  battle, 
with  music  and  dancing.  Few  of  these  ancient 
palaces  —  those  of  Sargon,  Tiglah-Pileser  II, 
Sardanapalus,  Semiramis,  and  the  rest — fail  to 
show  some  evidence  of  the  important  if  ignoble 
part  played  by  stringed  instruments  in  national 
and  daily  life. 

Byron  laid  his  finger  on  the  pulse  of  the  ancient 
empires  when,  in  his  "  Sardanapalus,"  he  wrote: 

"...   Hark  I  the  lute. 
The  lyre,  the  timbrel ;  the  lascivious  tinklings 
Of  lulling  instruments,  —  the  softening  voices 
Of  women.   .   .   ." 

The  Assyrian  harps  were  usually  about  four 
feet  high,  but  the  great  quantity  of  ornate  orna- 
mentation about  the  base  of  the  instruments,  the 
high,  carved  rest,  and  other  unnecessary  fashions 
of  decoration,  made  them  seem  much  higher  than 
they  really  were.  The  harps  had  no  front  pillar 
and  were  very  light  in  weight,  in  spite  of  their 
elaborate  ornamentation,  and  could  be  carried 
easily  while  the  player  danced  to  the  strains  of  his 
own  music.      The   strings  of  the  Assyrian  harps 

[35] 


eOO  The  Heart  of  Music  <®C® 

were  of  silk  as  a  rule,  and  they  nearly  all  had 
tuning-pegs.  Note  this,  in  view  of  the  general 
acceptance  of  the  theory  that  tuning-pegs  were 
invented  by  Claudius  Ptolemy  in  the  third  century 
A.D.  There  were  harps  fitted  with  tuning-pegs 
in  Assyria  and  other  Oriental  nations  many  years 
before  Christ. 

No  man  honoured  the  heart  of  music  in  those 
days,  but  all  men  recognised  its  power.  It  was 
contemned  by  the  wise  and  virtuous,  but  it  was 
not  condemned.  It  Avas  sometimes  ignored,  but 
it  was  never  forgotten.  In  the  sambuka  and  the 
nebel,  the  harp  and  lyre,  the  troubled  heart  of 
music  strove  to  find  expression.  But  that  was 
to  be  not  yet.  High  yearning  it  might  fugitively 
express  among  the  wise  old  priests  of  Alexandria 
and  Memphis.  Strange  orgies  it  might  enter  in 
Tyre  or  Babylon,  tuning  its  vibrating  pulses  to 
the  leaping  blood  of  the  mad  folk  about  it.  But 
its  own  song  —  the  sweet,  infinite,  intimate  song 
of  the  innermost  life-shrine  of  music  —  it  was 
yet  to  sing.  Many  and  long  were  its  paths  to  be 
before  it  entered  into  its  rightful  abiding-place, 
and,  —  given  back  its  own  voice,  at  last,  —  learned 
again  to  sing  the  songs  of  the  true  gods. 

At  Susa  they  worshipped  Astarte,  calling  her 
sometimes  Melitta,  for  reasons  which  we  do   not 

[36] 


<C®  The  Slar  of  Shame  <^> 

know.  This  is  one  of  the  most  illustrious  monu- 
ments to  the  puissance  of  this  sardonic  deity.  In 
the  bulls'  heads  used  in  the  temple  architecture 
we  may  conjecture  that  Baal,  or  some  prototype 
of  his,  Avas  symbolised.  He  is  chiefly  known  as 
"  Eth-Baal,  Lord  of  Tyre,"  but  was  worshipped 
elsewhere  as  a  consort  or  co-deity  of  Astarte,  a 
divine  Moloch,  demanding,  like  her,  blood  and 
debauchery  in  his  sacrificial  rites.  In  the  deco- 
rations at  Susa  we  find  the  representations  of 
many  tamboura,  showing  that  the  lute  as  well  as 
the  lyre  was  used  by  the  servants  of  Ashtoroth  to 
glorify  her  voluptuous  and  most  terrible  name. 

Babylon  had  a  strange  and  fluctuating  history; 
her  pendulum  of  fate  swung  high  and  low 
through  dizzying  degrees  of  triumph  and  defeat, 
such  as  could  only  have  been  known  in  days  of 
such  magnificent  and  terrible  extremes  as  rocked 
the  earth  in  the  pre-christian  era.  Babylon,  — 
whose  name  was  derived,  as  though  by  some 
irony  of  fate,  from  Bab-illu,  the  Gate  of  God,  — 
was  one  of  the  mightiest  and  oldest  of  all  the 
ancient  monarchies.  Conquered  by  the  Assyrians 
in  i25oB.c.,  she  rose  in  power  as  Assyria  fell. 
In  6o5  B.C.  Phoenicia,  already  tributary  to  Assyria, 
was  given  up  to  Babylon,  and  in  600  e.g.  Nabo- 
polassar,  viceroy  of  Babylon,  destroyed  Nineveh 

[37] 


<¥>  The  Heart  of  Music  «> 

and  so  released  his  people  from  the  Assyrian 
oppression.  In  Sg/i  b.c.  Egypt  too  came  into 
Babylonian  power  through  the  long-disputed  ques- 
tion of  authority  in  Syria.  Nebuchadnezzar  went 
into  Judea  in  586  b.c.  and  brought  back  the  people 
of  Jerusalem  into  what  was  known  as  ' '  The 
Great  Captivity."  In  538  b.  c,  however,  Baby- 
lon fell  at  the  hands  of  Cyrus  of  the  Persians. 
Her  career  was  the  longest  and  most  brilliant  of 
all  the  old  empires.  For  more  than  a  thousand 
years  she  was  "  the  centre  of  Asiatic  civilisation/' 
says  one  historian,  and  her  story  was  as  magical 
and  marvellous  as  a  song.  Wicked,  beautiful, 
brilliant,  decadent,  seductive,  and  mysterious,  the 
charm  of  Babylon  reaches  us  to-day  as  inde- 
structibly, as  surely  as  though  she  still  reigned 
among  her  Hanging  Gardens  on  the  banks  of  the 
Euphrates. 

The  Hanging  Gardens  were  made  by  Nebuchad- 
nezzar to  please  Amytis  his  wife,  a  daughter  of 
Media.  She  hated  that  sterile,  dry-baked  country 
and  longed  for  the  flowers  and  green  things  of  her 
own  land,  and  the  king  rebuilt  Babylon  in  order 
to  create  an  illusion  for  her  discontented  eyes. 
Among  the  Hanging  Gardens  and  exotic  trees, 
upon  the  mimic  mountain  in  the  city's  heart, 
forever  sounded  music,  —  music  languorous  and 

[38] 


<^®  The  Star  of  Shame  <K® 

intoxicating,  or  feverish  and  compelHng.  The 
ancients  knew  the  secret  of  touching  the  senses 
with  sounds  to  a  degree  which  it  is  difficult  for 
our  minds,  less  cukivated  emotionally,  to  grasp. 
They  were  tone  epicures,  these  people  of  the  dead 
world.  Not  only  had  they  the  knowledge  of  how 
to  strike  a  harp  so  that  the  listening  heart  was 
struck  also,  but  they  knew  how  to  be  moved  them- 
selves. They  had  the  gift  of  supersensitive  re- 
sponse to  the  faintest  changes  of  sound,  and  their 
finely  trained  senses  stirred  snake-like  to  the 
lightest  breath  of  the  sambuka,  played  by  slow 
hands  among  the  green  trees  of  the  Hanging 
Gardens. 

In  Babylonia  the  Star  of  Shame  was  known  as 
Istar,  and  typified  war  as  well  as  love.  She  was 
worshipped  with  every  sort  of  unholy  rite  con- 
ceivable, life  and  fortune  being  the  least  of  the 
sacrifices  offered  at  her  blood-stained  altars.  Her 
emblem  was  a  tree,  to  signify  the  generative  prin- 
ciple and  fruition  both  in  one.  She  was  supposed 
to  be  the  mother  of  two  sons  worshipped  also  as 
gods,  —  Eros  and  Pothos.  The  first  of  these 
meant  Love,  but  the  second.  Desire. 

Baal  as  well  as  Ashtoroth  was  worshipped  by 
music.  We  see  in  the  Bible  that  Nebuchadnezzar 
commanded  all  men  to  do  homage  to  these  hideous 

[39] 


®»  The  Heart  of  Music  ®C^> 

gods  to  the  sound  of  sweet  airs :  ' '  Then  an  herald 
cried  aloud,  To  jou  it  is  commanded,  0  people, 
nations,  and  languages,  that  at  what  time  ye  hear 
the  sound  of  the  cornet,  flute,  harp,  sackbut, 
psaltery,  dulcimer,  and  all  kinds  of  music,  ye  fall 
down  and  worship  the  golden  image  that 
Nebuchadnezzar  the  king  hath  set  up"  (Daniel  iii, 
4,  5).  The  "  golden  image  "  is  generally  under- 
stood to  have  been  Baal,  but  niay  have  been 
Astarte,  since  she  too  was  worshipped  by 
Nebuchadnezzar.  It  is  still  more  probable  that 
the  two,  god  and  goddess,  were  adored  together, 
their  general  character  and  mission  seeming  so 
peculiarly  similar. 

To  Babylonia  came  the  Jewish  captives  from 
Jerusalem,  bearing  their  harps  and  psalteries  with 
which  they  had  been  wont  to  sing  the  praises  of 
Jehovah.  It  is  strange  and  rather  lovely  to  think 
that  they  should  bear  their  musical  instruments 
with  them  into  the  Great  Captivity.  To  them 
the  Heart  of  Music  had  a  sweeter  and  closer  call 
than  to  the  pagan  kingdoms.  They  heard  comfort 
sing  in  the  vibrating  metal  strings  that  they  loved, 
and  consolation  came  to  them  in  touch  of  these 
primitive  dear  things,  even  as  it  comes  to  a  musi- 
cian to-day  who  holds  his  violin,  mute,  in  his 
arms.      There  has  been  much  evolution  in  the 

[4o] 


<K^  The  Star  of  Shame  <>:> 

house  of  the  Heart   of  Music,  but  httle   in   the 
heart  itself. 

We  all  know  the  marvellous  description  in 
Psalm  cxxxvii: 

' '  By  the  rivers  of  Babylon,  there  w^e  sat  down, 
yea,  we  wept,  when  we  remembered  Zion. 

' '  We  hanged  our  harps  upon  the  willows  in 
the  midst  thereof. 

' '  For  there  they  that  carried  us  away  captive 
required  of  us  a  song;  and  they  that  wasted  us 
required  of  us  mirth,  saying.  Sing  us  one  of  the 
songs  of  Zion. 

' '  How  shall  we  sing  the  Lord's  song  in  a 
strange  land?" 

Already  the  Israelites  were  renowned  for  their 
skill  in  music.  Moses,  who  studied  with  Egyptian 
priests,  was  well  learned  in  musical  science,  such 
as  it  was  in  those  days,  and  harps  played  an  im- 
portant part  in  the  religious  observances  in  the 
temples  at  Jerusalem.  The  kinnor,  which  legend 
says  was  invented  by  Jubal,  was  the  beloved  of 
many  hearts ,  and  the  larger  harps  were  also  much 
in  use  in  Judea.  To  Simon  Maccabaeus,  200  b.c, 
is  attributed  the  invention  of  the  first  of  the  beauti- 
ful silver  and  copper  harps  so  beloved  by  the  Jews. 
David's  own  harp  was  strung  with  gold.  Legend 
—  or  history  —  says  that  he  always  slept  with  it 


«^  The  Heart  of  Music  s(X^ 

above  his  pillow,  that  the  hght  airs  of  the  night 
might  stir  it  and  the  sound  drift  through  his 
dreams. 

It  is  written  that  Elisha,  in  prophesying, 
suddenly  exclaimed,  "  Now  bring  me  a  minstrel!" 
and  that  while  the  harper  played,  "the  hand 
of  the  Lord  came  upon  him"  and  he  saw  the 
future.  The  two  greatest  Israelitish  musicians, 
of  course,  were  Solomon  and  that  David  of  beloved 
memory  who  charmed  the  soul-sick  king,  Saul, 
by  the  magic  of  his  harp  with  strings  of  gold. 

"...   God's  child  with  His  dew,"  sings  Browning, 
*'  On  thy  gracious  gold  hair,  and  those  lilies  still  living  and  blue 
Just  broken  to  twine  round  thy  harp-strings,  as  if  no  wild  heat 
Were  now  raging  to  torture  the  desertl   .   .   ." 

To  David,  the  yellow-haired  shepherd,  belongs 
the  honour  of  the  crown  of  psalms.  The  word 
"  psalm "  seems  to  have  been  a  hybrid  article 
signifying,  at  will,  a  ' '  sacred  hymn"  or  a  "  musical 
instrument."  Undoubtedly  the  Psalms  of  David 
were  all  made  to  be  sung.  There  is,  indeed, 
every  evidence  in  favour  of  this  assumption;  and 
from  the  ' '  psalm"  was  derived  the  word' '  psaltery" 
as  the  name  for  an  instrument  which  endured  far 
into  the  Christian  era,  and  indeed  until  the  Middle 
Ages.  The  Hebrews  are  generally  credited  with 
lis  invention,  but  records  show  that  it  was  derived 


«^»   The  Star  of  Shame  <K5® 

originally  from  an  Oriental  instrument,  the  name 
for  which  best  survives  in  the  qanun  of  the  Arabs. 
The  psaltery  was  a  small  square-shaped  instru- 
ment with  a  handle  like  that  of  a  magnifying- 
glass,  and  usually  ten  strings,  without  pegs  or 
other  facilities  for  tuning.  In  later  years  St. 
Jerome  had  a  naive  theory  that  the  psaltery's  ten 
strings  represented  the  Ten  Commandments,  and 
the  four  corners  of  the  square  frame  the  Four 
Gospels.  Some  of  the  psalteries,  however,  had 
fewer  strings.  Psalms  vi  and  viii  are  headed  with 
the  direction  "To  be  sung  on  eight  strings." 
And  there  is  also  room  for  the  theory  that  there 
was  in  the  land  of  Israel  a  survival  of  the  Egyptian 
musical  system  based  on  the  ' '  Seven  Great  Tones." 

There  was  also  the  cithar,  an  instrument  with 
a  back  shaped  like  a  tortoise,  tuned  to  diminished 
chords.  This  of  course,  unlike  the  harp  and 
psaltery,  was  almost  exclusively  dedicated  to  sec- 
ular uses. 

It  was  a  strange  land  indeed  to  which  the 
captives  had  come,  bearing  their  harps  and 
psalteries.  Surely  it  was  in  such  passionate 
laments  of  slavery  as  the  smitten  strings  must 
have  learned  then,  in  such  broken  utterings  of 
despair,  that  the  Heart  of  Music  gained  its  dirge 
and  protest, — the  inimitable,  limitless  wail  that 

[43] 


<}©>  The  Heart  of  Music  <^> 

sometimes  sounds  beneath  the  boAv  of  the  vioHn 
to-daj.  The  human  note  of  pain  entered  its 
pulses  then,  and  it  has  never  lost  it,  through  all 
its  long  journey  up  the  years.  It  carries  with  it 
yet  the  memory  of  lost,  mad  days  and  nights 
beneath  the  hot  and  languid  skies  of  the  Old 
World.  It  remembers  the  sick  sweetness  of  its 
own  strange  song  before  the  altars  in  Nineveh 
and  Tyre,  and  the  mourning  melody  that  it  knew 
when  the  Israelites  played  in  bondage.  Through 
the  good  days  of  its  destiny  it  has  not  fogotten 
those  few  thousands  of  years  when  men  wor- 
shipped Ashtoroth  and  the  world  was  on  fire. 


[M] 


zDzeam   (yjbudi 


rt 


**  Since  hearing  it,  I  feel  a  strange  longing,  as  for  a  loved  one  far 
away."  —  Kalidasa,  56  B.C. 


IV.  —  Dream   Music 


!^0  old  that  all  the  lagging  centuries  of  mortal 
time  must  seem  but  as  butterflies  flitting  across 
the  sea ;  so  old  that  only  the  warm  earth  and 
the  far  stars  can  seem  contemporaries;  so  old 
that  the  beginning  wears  no  veil,  Asia  has 
dreamed  out  her  thousands  of  years,  unsolved, 
unstirred,  unchanged.  The  Far  East,  whither  we 
are  bent  now,  —  China  and  India,  —  has  been 
from  the  commencement  of  time  a  place  of  dreams. 
Even  when  she  was  young  and  vigorous  China 
loved  best  to  meditate  and  philosophise,  and  dwell 
among  phantoms  and  grow  wise.  And  as  her  re- 
ligion and  her  life,  so  were  her  arts  all  mystic  and 
introspective.  Sensuous  she  was,  but  aesthetically 
so,  not  brutally;  passionate  she  was,  but  silently, 
not  violently;  glad  she  was,  but  gravely;  melan- 
choly, but  with  the  philosophy  of  understanding. 
There  was  one  curious  point  about  the  Chinese 
character,  however, — a  sort  of  paradox,  which, 
perhaps,  is  the  secret  of  our  utter  inability,  as 
races,  to  understand  each  other  to  this  day.  In 
j  all  things  the  Chinese  loved  symmetry  and  accu- 

racy, —  an  odd  quality  when  you  attach  to  it 

[47] 


«si  The  Heart  of  Music  <^>  • 

the  Oriental  dreamfulness  of  their  character.  It 
is  these  two  traits  which  have  made  China  so 
marvellous  in  philosophy  and  so  unprogre^ive 
in  what  we  term  civilisation.  Two  elemients,  so 
strangely  dissimilar  and  yet  so  interdependent, 
brought  forth  a  Confucius,  even  as  they  keep 
solid  the  wall  between  China  and  the  world. 

The  Chinese,  as  more  than  one  writer  has 
pointed  out,  are  pedantic  to  a  fault;  but  it  is  a 
fantastic  pedantry.  Their  sciences  and  arts  are 
all  stamped  with  a  curious  ordered  poetry,  a  utili- 
tarian imagination.  In  their  pottery,  painting, 
embroidery ,  and  all  the  decorative  arts  they  show 
the  same  minute  care  in  detail,  the  same  fanciful 
exaggerations,  the  same  extravagance  of  invention, 
the  same  painstaking  and  fantastic,  if  sometimes 
grotesque,  method  of  execution. 

In  their  music  and  musical  instruments  they 
did  not  step  out  of  character.  They  invented 
immense  numbers  of  keys;  they  invested  their 
musical  system  with  philosophic,  moral,  and 
governmental  significance,  and  yet  worked  this 
theory  out  on  such  limited,  cramped  lines  that 
their  music  has  never  grown  beyond  its  prim- 
itive state.  And  to-day  their  instruments  are  no 
more  perfected  than  they  were  when  they  were 
invented. 

[liS] 


<X>  Dream  Music  «> 

In  2960  B.C.  the  Chinese  sage  Fo-Hi,  or  Fouhi, 
invented  the  kin  and  the  che,  both  stringed 
instruments.  Fetis  seems  to  consider  the  kin  the 
more  important  of  the  two,  but  according  to  all 
other  authorities  the  kin  was  only  a  lute,  something 
in  the  shape  of  a  pear,  and  having  four  strings 
of  indifferent  quality  of  tone.  Inside  it  were 
several  bells  which  jangled  when  the  strings  were 
twanged.  The  che,  however,  was  much  more 
perfect.  It  was  nine  feet  in  length  and  had 
twenty-five  strings  in  the  chromatic  scale.  It  was 
raised  a  short  distance  from  the  floor,  like  a  dul- 
cimer, and  was  played  by  musicians  kneeling  or 
crouching  beside  it.  Naumann  calls  it  a  "table 
psaltery,"  which  is  an  ambiguous  term  but  per- 
haps describes  it  as  well  as  any  other.  Its  name 
che  means  "the  wonderful,"  and  it  is  the 
national  instrument  of  China.  To  it  are  sung 
all  the  ancient  music,  the  hymns  of  praise,  the 
chants  and  songs  of  antiquity.  With  it  is  always 
played  the  po-fou,  which  is  a  small  drum.  One 
musician  emphasises  the  time  on  the  po-fou, 
another  emphasises  the  melody  on  the  che,  and  a 
third  sings. 

We  are  told  that  all  the  musicians  of  the  ancient 
world  were  blind.  They  are  reported  so  in  the 
old  chronicles  and  portrayed  so  in  the  old  pictures. 


1 


<C®  The  Heart  of  Music  <®> 

A  curious  reminder  of  this  tradition  is  found  in 
the  "  Bhnd  Beggars  of  Spain." 

Prince  Tsay-yu,  a  philosopher  and  student, 
once  explained  this  tradition  as  follows:  "The 
ancient  musicians  closed  their  eyes  while  per- 
forming, so  that  no  external  object  should  engage 
their  attention,  and  it  is  from  this  habit  that  the 
people  gave  them  the  name  of  the  Blind." 

This  explanation,  whether  true  or  false,  is  in- 
tensely Chinese  in  its  gravely  fantastic  idea. 

Very  Asiatic  also  is  the  wedding  of  music  and 
perfume  which  is  shown  in  all  the  Chinese  pic- 
tures of  the  past.  When  musicians  played  there 
was  always  somewhere  near  a  mass  of  flowers. 
This  extreme  of  aestheticism  is  amazing  to  us 
who  look  upon  the  suggestion  of  possible  syno- 
nyms in  the  arts  jDurely  as  a  very  recent  vagary  of 
decadent  imagination. 

The  Chinese,  like  the  Chaldeans  and  Egyptians, 
invested  the  notes  of  their  scales  and  the  strings 
of  their  kin  and  che  with  special  cosmic  signifi- 
cance. Indeed  they  carried  their  musical  philos- 
ophy to  such  an  extraordinary  degree  that  they 
made  their  scale  a  legal  institution,  forbidding  the 
hasty  introduction  of  new  tones  as  they  would 
forbid  hasty  legislation.  Their  original  scale  was 
penta tonic  of  course,  and  was  composed  of  whole 

[5o] 


<>>  Dream  Music  <X> 

tones,  representing  the  independent  things,  — 
heaven ,  sun ,  and  man ,  —  and  half  tones ,  typifying 
the  dependent  things,  —  earth,  moon,  and  woman. 
One  note  of  their  scale  was  named  '  •  The  Em- 
peror,' one  "  The  Prime  Minister,  "  one  "  Loyal 
Subjects,"  one  "Affairs  of  State,"  one  "The 
Mirror  of  the  World."  They  called  the  whole 
"  The  World  Music"  and  believed  that  the  holy 
bird  Fung-Hoang  invented  it,  creating  the  whole 
tones  himself,  while  his  mate  made  the  half  tones. 

They  were  "  the  only  people,"  says  Naumann, 
"  who,  thousands  of  years  ago,  possessed  a  system 
of  octaves,  a  circle  of  fifths,  and  a  normal  tone. 
With  this  knowledge,  however,  their  eighty-four 
scales,  each  of  which  has  a  special  philosophical 
significance,  appear  all  the  more  incomprehensible 
to  us." 

The  eighty-four  keys  seem  to  argue  an  extraor- 
dinary sensibility  of  ear  in  any  case ;  for  our 
carefully  cultivated  musical  perceptions  would  be 
incapable  of  noting  such  subtle  gradations  of  pitch. 

There  are  two  theories  as  to  the  next  era  in  the 
destiny  of  the  Heart  of  Music.  That  of  Fetis  and 
other  illustrious  authorities  is  that  the  violin  was 
born  in  the  Orient,  —  in  India,  in  point  of  fact, 
—  and  thus  carried  out  into  the  Occidental  world 
by   slow   and   also   casual   degrees,   through   the 

[5i] 


^Xj®  The  Heart  of  Music  <^> 

Indians,  Arabs,  and  others.  That  of  Edward 
John  Payne  and  many  others  even  as  erudite  and 
well  informed  is  that  the  stringed  instrument 
was  carried  in  very  primitive  form  into  Greece 
by  the  Phoenicians ,  who  had  gotten  it  from  Egypt 
and,  as  they  had  done  Avith  the  alphabet  and 
many  other  products  and  methods,  made  com- 
mercial use  of  it.  To  this  theory  we  answer  that 
the  imported  instrument  must  have  been  extraor- 
dinarily primitive  —  if  it  was  imported;  for  the 
first  stringed  instrument  known  in  Greece  was 
the  monochord,  —  a  crude  affair  with  one  untun- 
able  string, — later  developed  to  utilitarian  rather 
than  artistic  uses.  The  Egyptians,  as  we  know, 
had  very  complete  stringed  instruments.  Never- 
theless, since  no  man  knows  the  truth,  we  must 
consider  all  sides  and  theories. 

The  ravanastron.  or  revanastron,  was  an  Indian 
invention,  but  long  before  it  was  achieved  the 
Hindoos  had  their  exquisite  vina.  It  was  a  long 
slender  tube,  with  elaborate  decoration,  many 
frets,  and  a  gourd  or  hollow  box  near  each  end 
for  resonance.  The  grace  of  these  instruments  was 
extraordinary,  and  their  tone  most  lovely.  They 
were  famous  for  their  enormous  range  of  chro- 
matic tones.  Music  was  rather  complicated  and 
extensive  in  India  in  those  days. 

[52] 


«®  Dream  Music  <X> 

According  to  Heron- Allen,  whose  views  coin- 
cide with  those  of  Fetis,  the  violin  genealogy 
would  be  as  follows,  beginning  with  the  revan- 
astron,  of  which  we  shall  hear  more  shortly: 

Revanastroa 

,r ' 1 

Kemangeh  Rebab 

I 
Rubebe 


Gigue  Rebec 


Kit  Viol  Viol 

I . I 

Violin 

There  is  a  pretty  little  old  tale  about  the  devo- 
tion of  the  Gopi,  nymphs  and  shepherdesses,  to 
the  young  god  Krishna,  temporarily  incarnated 
upon  earth  as  a  handsome  shepherd.  There  were 
sixteen  thousand  Gopi,  and  in  order  to  win  the 
god's  favour  from  her  sisters,  each  one  invented, 
to  do  him  homage,  a  new  key.  This  story  is,  of 
course,  most  fanciful  and  fantastic,  but  there  sur- 
vive still  thirty-six  keys  in  India.  The  charm 
of  the  vina  has  been  commemorated  by  every 
Hindoo  and  Mohammedan  poet ;  it  is  a  seductive 
thing  enough,  with  a  wailing  note  and  an  insistent 
element  of  mystic  enchantment. 

[53] 


<}s>  The  Heart  of  Music  <:^« 

Some  of  us  'have  read  versions  of  that  marvel- 
lous poem  Goethe  loved,  "  Sakuntala,"  written 
by  Kalidasa  in  the  year  56  b.c.  One  scene  is  par- 
ticularly significant  musically.  King  Dushyanta 
enters  his  garden  and  is  greeted  by  tw^o  singers. 
He  seats  himself  w^ith  his  friend,  Madhaw^ga. 
The  sound  of  a  vina  is  heard  through  the  grove : 

"Madhawga:  Hark,  do  you  not  hear  the  sound 
of  song  from  yonder  room  ?  It  is  the  harmony  of 
a  perfectly  tuned  vina.^  Tis  there  the  Princess 
plays. 

"King:  Hush!  Let  me  listen!  [The  voice  of 
Sakuntala  is  heard.  She  sings,  accompanying  herself 
on  her  vina.]  Since  hearing  it,  I  feel  a  strange 
longing, — as  though  for  a  loved  one  far  away!  " 

Love  songs,  however,  form  but  an  inconsider- 
able portion  of  the  lyrical  poetry  of  India.  The 
true  Oriental  —  one  should  rather  say  the  true 
Asiatic — spirit  is  more  clearly  manifested  in 
religious  chants,  and  in  these  the  literature  of  the 
country  abounds.  Many  of  them  were  composed, 
obviously,  to  be  sung  to  the  accompaniment  of 
vina,  ravanastron,  and  other  stringed  instru- 
ments, and  the  most  laggard  fancy  can  intersperse 
the  melancholy  minor  chords  so  beloved   to 

1  The  phrase  "perfectly  tuned  "  seems  to  show  that  tuning-pegs  were 
already  in  use  in  India. 

[54] 


«j®  Dream   Music  <®> 

children  of  the  East  between  the  exalted  dreami- 
ness of  such  stanzas  as  we  may  be  privileged  to 
read  or  hear. 

One  of  the  most  characteristic  Hindoo  poems 
is  the  following : 

♦'He  who  gives  alms 
Goes  to  the  highest  place  — 
He  goes  to  the  Gods  .    .   . 
Where  there  is  light  eternal 
In  the  world  where  the  sun  is  placed  !  — 
In  that  immortal,  imperishable  world. 
Place  me,  O  Somal  — 
Where  there  is  happiness  and  delight. 
Where  joy  and  pleasure  reside. 
Where  the  desires  of  our  heart  are  attained  : 
—  There  make  me  immortal." 

To  the  Asiatics  we  must  acknowledge  an  in- 
comparably deep  debt  of  gratitude.  They  were 
the  first  people  to  invent  and  make  use  of  a  bow 
on  strings.  Almost  five  thousand  years  ago  Rav- 
anon,  King  of  Ceylon,  made  the  first  bow  instru- 
ment, called  the  ravanastron, — called  also,  as  has 
already  been  said,  revanastron.  It  was  a  cylinder 
of  sycamore  wood  hollowed  out  from  one  end  to 
the  other  and  strung  with  fibres  of  wild  beasts. 
The  first  bows  were  merely  bamboo  canes  made 
rough  by  tiny  cuts  in  the  wood  and  drawn  across 
the  string  with  a  very  crude  twanging  effect. 
Finally  hair  and  resin  were  added  to  the  cane  and 

[55] 


®X>  The  Heart  of  Music  «> 

the  bow  was  made.  There  were  several  kinds  of 
bows,  and  all  had  names, — garika,  kona,  pari- 
vadas,  and  others.  Sometimes  the  ravanastron 
was  strung  with  silk  instead  of  animals'  sinews  ; 
nearly  all  Asiatic  instruments  have  silk  strings 
to-day. 

The  top  of  the  instrument  —  the  thin  board 
stretched  over  the  cavity  and  under  the  strings  — 
was  usually  of  satinwood  of  the  very  finest  and 
softest  fibre.  In  the  corrupted  forms  of  the  revan- 
astron,  the  rebab  and  kemangeh,  played  by  the 
Arabs  to-day ,  are  much  more  crude .  Naumann ,  as 
well  as  Heron-Allen  and  Fetis,  consider  the  rebab 
"the  precursor  of  all  our  stringed  instruments," 
saying  that  the  Crusaders  probably  brought  it  back 
with  them  to  France  and  England. 

India  had  a  magoudi,  or  guitar,  also,  and  to-day 
possesses  an  exquisitely  shaped  but  primitive  violin 
called  the  serinda.  There  was  also  a  sitar  in 
Northern  India,  — a  sort  of  guitar  or  lute. 

The  mystery  and  mysticism  of  music  is  mar- 
vellously understood  by  the  Orientals  —  above 
all  by  the  Indian  people.  One  writer  speaks  of 
"  the  soft  sentimentality  of  the  Hindoo"  ;  but  it 
goes  deeper  than  that.  The  melancholy,  sensu- 
ous tenderness  of  the  Indian  race,  the  brooding 
passion,  the  passive  emotionalism, — these  things 

[56] 


CO?  Dream   Music  @X^ 

are  not  soft  nor  sentimental.  They  are  the  in- 
evitable national  expression,  the  outcome  of 
thousands  of  years  spent  in  dreams.  The  inner 
life  of  India  has  always  been  as  acute,  as  vital  as 
the  external,  — perhaps  even  more  so  in  its  im- 
portance and  effect.  The  mystic  existence  of  the 
soul  has  been  from  the  beginning  of  paramount 
value  to  the  Asiatic.  He  has  always  lived  in 
dreams,  and  his  music  is  perhaps  the  most  char- 
acteristic and  elemental  expression  of  the  eternal 
revery  of  the  race. 

Although  this  is  hardly  the  place  to  speak  of 
Persia,  the  great  mysterious  nation  forever  to  us 
associated  with  Zoroaster  and  the  rose-garden  of 
Omar,  yet  before  we  leave  the  East  we  must 
pause  for  a  moment  to  offer  tribute  to  Persian 
music,  the  sensuously  yet  tenderly  poetic  music 
which  is  as  lovely  to-day  as  it  was  a  thousand 
years  ago. 

The  Persians  were  a  renownedly  musical  people. 
Although  they  were  splendid  soldiers,  they  were 
the  gentlest,  most  artistic  of  races,  and  song  came 
as  readily  from  their  lips  as  perfume  from  a  rose. 
John  Lord  speaks  of  "their  love  of  truth,  their 
heroism  in  war,  the  simplicity  of  their  habits 
.  .  .  their  kindness  toward  women  and  slaves,'* 
and  other  gentle  traits  pleasant  to  dwell  on  amid 

[5?] 


<»  The  Heart  of  Music  <:^> 

the  battle,  murder,  and  sudden  death  that  fills  the 
chronicles  of  antiquity. 

When  Parmenio,  Alexander's  general,  con- 
quered Persia  he  found  three  hundred  and  twenty- 
nine  women  musicians  in  the  royal  palace,  — 
proof  positive  of  the  position  music  held  in  ancient 
Persia. 

The  Islamite  races  fed  on  dreams  and  poured 
visions  into  their  songs  as  into  their  tales.  The 
Arabs  dreamed  on  the  desert,  the  Moors  dreamed 
in  the  mountains,  the  Turks  dreamed  in  the  pal- 
aces,—  everywhere  they  dreamed,  and  still  dream, 
under  the  changeless  orange  sun.  Haroun  al 
Raschid  was  not  the  only  ruler  of  the  East  to  par- 
don a  woman  prisoner  because  of  the  lute-playing 
of  an  attendant,  which  set  him  dreaming  so  that 
he  forgot  his  wrath. 

Dreams  —  dreams!  They  come  like  phantoms, 
evoked  by  the  very  whisper  of  the  word  ' '  Orient " 
—  the  East,  the  Enigma  of  the  World.  The 
thought  brings  pictures  sketched  in  tones  of 
shadow.  The  sonorous  tuinbling  music  of  the 
Ganges,  the  white  flame-tipped  wonders  of  the 
Himalayas,  the  dense  wetgreen  of  the  jungle  in 
spring,  the  echo  of  the  temple  bell  across  the  sen- 
tient stillness  of  noon, — these  things  come  to  us 
at  the  very  name  of  India.     Strange  to  think  that 

[58] 


<^>  Dream  Music  <i<^ 

our  violin,  well  governed,  wrell  learned,  sprang 
into  life  among  those  everlasting  hills  and  infinite 
mysteries,  gaining  strange  w^isdom  from  priest 
and  peasant,  tuning  its  heart  to  a  song  beyond 
our  understanding,  filling  its  answering  strings 
with  dream  music  not  entirely  of  this  world. 

For  after  all  it  is  to  India  that  we  owe  the 
greatest  debt,  and  it  is  India  who  of  them  all 
has  dreamed  most  greatly,  most  marvellously 
through  the  centuries.  There  is  an  old  poem 
called  "The  Hindoo."     It  ends  in  this  fashion: 

"  His  lute  and  vina  are  beloved  things, 
He  learns  their  souls,  and  counts  each  echo  dear, 
And  he  has  taught  his  heart  the  way  to  hear 
The  ancient  dream  that  lingers  in  the  strings." 


[59] 


oS^poUo'd  (yJoeddage 


How  he  comforts  his  heart  with  the  sound  of  the  lyre, 

Fairly  and  cunningly  arched,  and  adorned  with  a  bridge  of  silver, 

Stimulating  his  courage,  and  singing  the  deeds  of  the  heroes." 

The  Iliad. 


V. — Apollo's  Message 


1  0  the  tribes  of  half-savage  men  who  eked  out 
an  insufficient  living  among  rugged  mountains 
and  uncultivated  land,  who  battled  with  wild  beasts 
and  wandered  ever  from  place  to  place,  driving 
their  cattle  before  them  and  improvising  rude 
shelters  with  straw  and  brushwood,  there  came 
strange  vessels  full  of  men  over  the  mysterious 
sea.  These  men  wore  rich  garments  and  bore  all 
manner  of  things  shaped  finely  and  fashioned  of 
gold.  They  carried,  too,  great  quantities  of  stuff 
and  draperies  dyed  in  rare  shades  of  purple  and 
crimson.  The  barbarians  marvelled  greatly  at  the 
newcomers,  who  said  that  they  were  Phoenicians, 
merchants  from  the  city  of  Sidon.  And  the 
barbarians,  endowed  even  at  this  remote  era 
with  the  adoration  of  beauty,  welcomed  the 
Phoenicians  and  entered  into  commerce  with 
them,  gaining  many  of  the  marvellous  things  that 
loaded  their  ships  and  giving  land  and  brother 
ships  to  the  newcomers.  For  the  rugged  and 
unproductive  land  was  that  which  one  day  was 
to  yield  up  groves  of  olive  trees  and  tangles  of 

[63] 


«^  The  Heart  of  Music  «>:> 

grapevines,  and  the  barbarians  were  to  be  known 
as  the  Greeks. 

They  acquired  the  habits  of  civiKsation  very 
rapidly,  building  rarely  beautiful  palaces  and 
cultivating  orchards  and  grainfields,  learning  the 
arts,  and  assimilating  the  usages  of  the  most 
advanced  Eastern  education.  Every  great  na- 
tion has  had  to  be  an  adaptable,  assimilative  one, 
accruing  to  itself  the  best  of  other  countries 
rather  than  growing  up  and  developing  in  its  own 
unbreached  citadels.  There  can  be  no  high  prog- 
ress that  is  purely  internal  and  concentrated  ; 
or  so  w^e  must  believe  if  we  study  our  histories 
and  philosophies.  All  seeds  require  fertilisation, 
and  as  the  hermit  never  could  learn  to  be  a  king 
or  captain  of  men,  so  the  arrogant,  unadaptable 
race  could  never  fulfil  itself  and  become  a  ruling 
principle  of  the  world. 

The  Greeks  soon  out-Phceniciaed  Phoenicia 
in  their  passion  for  beauty  and  their  aptitude  for 
all  the  arts  and  crafts  of  the  day.  Gold,  silver, 
and  bronze  frescos  of  many  colours,  draperies 
delicately  woven  or  rich  and  heavy, — all  these 
were  used  to  ornament  the  great  houses  of  the 
native  chiefs,  and  later  the  palaces  of  the  native 
kings.  Art  grew  to  be  a  national,  not  an  im- 
ported glory,  and  in  the  guise  of  exquisitely  carved 

[6/1] 


<^>  Apollo's  Message  <^> 

and  decorated  lyres,  and  in  the  worship  of  Apollo, 
the  bright-haired  God  of  Song,  the  Heart  of  Music 
beat  its  soft  message  in  ancient  Greece. 

The  general  impression  seems  to  be  that 
Pythagoras  founded  stringed  music  in  Greece 
when  he  brought  the  monochord  from  Egypt. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  the  Greeks  used  the  simmi- 
kon,  a  harp  with  thirty-five  strings,  invented  by 
Simon  a  good  two  hundred  years  before  the  era 
of  Pythagoras,  as  well  as  other  instruments  more 
elaborate.  Terpander  of  Sparta,  who  lived  about 
700  B.  c,  is  said  to  have  created  the  first  definite 
period  in  Greek  music,  and  to  have  been  a  singer 
and  composer  of  note.  He  gave  the  lyre  seven 
perfect  strings  instead  of  four,  thus  discovering 
the  octave.  Of  course  the  octave  had  been  dis- 
covered in  the  East  before  this,  and  it  is  a  matter 
open  to  question  whether  Terpander  had  not  some 
Oriental  lore  by  way  of  foundation  when  he 
worked  out  his  new  theories  of  music. 

By  Pythagoras  and  other  masters  the  monochord 
was  used  chiefly  as  a  factor  in  education.  It  was 
a  vehicle  for  instruction,  not  performance,  and  in 
one  sense  took  the  place  of  a  tuning-fork.  Sing- 
ing, acoustics,  and  a  sense  of  pitch  were  taught 
by  the  aid  of  the  monochord.  The  cleverer 
among  the  Greek  masters  perfected  this  primitive 

[65] 


<K®  The  Heart  of  Music  ^x^ 

little  instrument  to  such  a  point  that,  by  the  help 
of  a  movable  bridge  which  cut  off  aliquot  parts  on 
the  one  string,  they  could  obtain  all  the  intervals 
of  a  scale  in  exceptionally  true  tones.  The  Greek 
name  for  the  monochord  was  a  combination  of 
/xopos  (single)  and  x^P^V  (^  string),  and  the  in- 
strument formed  a  very  important  factor  in  the 
education  of  the  young  Greeks.  The  deduc- 
tion, therefore,  of  Edward  John  Payne  and  others, 
that  the  monochord  was  one  of  the  legitimate  par- 
ents of  the  violin,  seems  a  little  far-fetched.  Mr. 
Payne's  table  of  the  violin's  antecedents  is  as 
follows : 

Lyre  Monochord 

Crwth  , I I 

I 


I  j  I  Hurdy-Gurdy  Marine  Trumpet 

Crowd         Rebec         Geige 


Troubadour's  Fiddle 
Viol  (Viola  da  Gamba  and  Violone,  or  Double  Bass) 

, ! 

r 1 1 

Lyra        Lirone  Viola  d'Amore  Violin 

(Also  Tenor  Violin, 

Violoncello,  and 

Double  Bass) 

The  theory  that  the  harp  sprang  full-fledged 
into  Greece  through  Eastern  sources  seems  much 
[66] 


€(»  Apollo's  Message  e(X^ 

more  probable.  Strabo  says:  "  Those  who  re- 
gard the  whole  of  Asia,  as  far  as  India,  as  con- 
secrated to  Bacchus  point  to  that  country  as  the 
origin  of  a  great  portion  of  the  present  music." 

There  is  a  curious  similarity  in  the  Greek  and 
Asiatic  names  for  the  instruments,  as  well  as 
in  the  instruments  themselves.  In  Greece  we 
find  the  sambyke,  said  to  have  been  invented  by 
Ibykos  in  5 Ac  b.g.  What  relation  was  it  to  the 
sambuka  and  sambouca  used  in  Babylon,  and  in 
Nineveh  and  Phoenicia  as  well  ?  How  about  the 
Greek  pandoura,  a  lute  with  three  strings,  and  the 
Oriental  tamboura,  also  a  lute  with  three  strings? 
And  why  do  we  find  the  magadis  in  the  Orient 
and  also  in  Greece?  The  conclusion  that  all  the 
Greek  instruments  were  probably  developed  from 
Eastern  instruments  introduced  by  the  Phoeni- 
cians is  so  simple  and  seems  so  obvious  that  no 
wonder  the  people  who  love  theories  hesitate  to 
accept  it. 

There  were  plenty  of  instruments  known  by 
purely  Greek  names,  of  course.  The  Greeks 
were  too  inventive  and  artistic  a  race  not  to 
appropriate  and  improve  upon  any  rare  impor- 
tation. So  we  have  the  huge  Greek  harp,  the 
epigonion  with  forty  strings ;  the  barbiton, 
fashioned  exactly  like  the  Egyptian  harp,  which 

[67] 


<^>  The  Heart  of  Music  <¥> 

was  the  instrument  beloved  by  Sappho  and 
Anacreon ;  the  phorminx,  the  real  Homeric 
lyre ;  and  the  peklis,  fitted  like  the  magadis 
with  twenty  strings,  but  giving  out  only  ten  full 
tones. 

The  Greeks  made  music  a  more  conspicuous 
element  in  their  daily  life  even  than  the  Orientals. 
In  war  or  peace,  work  or  play,  love  or  death, 
there  was  ahvays  music,  and  music  of  a  high 
lyric  and  melodic  order  which  it  is  difficult  to 
credit  across  so  great  a  distance  of  years. 

Botsford  gives  a  prose  translation  of  a  page 
of  Homer  which  brings  the  spirit  of  the  past 
irresistibly  before  us  : 

"  There  were  youths  dancing,  and  maidens  of 
costly  wooing,  their  hands  on  one  another's 
wrists.  Fine  linen  the  maidens  had  on,  and  the 
youths  well-woven  doublets  faintly  glistening 
with  oil.  Fine  wreaths  had  the  maidens,  and 
the  youths  daggers  of  gold  hanging  from  silver 
baldrics.  And  now  would  they  run  round  with 
deft  feet  exceeding  lightly,  as  when  a  potter  sitting 
at  his  wheel  that  fitteth  between  his  hands  maketh 
trial  of  it  whether  it  run  ;  and  anon  they  would 
run  in  lines  to  meet  each  other.  And  a  great 
company  stood  round  the  lovely  dance  in  joy ; 
and  among  them  a  divine  minstrel  was  making 

[68] 


<^>  Apollo's  Message  «® 

music  on  his  lyre,  and  through  the  midst  of  them, 
as  he  began  his  strain,  two  tumblers  whirled." 

Even  as  in  Egypt,  we  see,  gymnasts,  athletes, 
wrestlers,  and  jugglers  went  hand  in  hand  with 
musicians  at  great  festivals.  We  know  how  even 
late  into  the  mediaeval  centuries  "jongleur  "  stood 
for  both  juggler  and  singer.  Aristophanes  in 
describing  a  day  of  triumphant  and  over-excited 
feasting  uses  the  phrase  "with  garlands,  sing- 
ing-girls, and  bloody  noses,"  which  shows  that 
even  in  Greece  music  had  its  place  at  times  among 
the  passions  and  extravagances  of  men,  as  with 
the  Assyrians  and  Babylonians.  A  remnant  of 
Chaldean  superstition  clings  to  the  art  of  song  in 
the  record  of  sundry  Grecian  leeches  who  cured 
wounds  by  singing  soft  melodies  to  the  accom- 
paniment of  the  lyre.  The  blind  musicians  of 
Egypt  and  China  are  recalled  by  references  in  the 
"Iliad"  and  "Odyssey"  to  the  old  and  blind 
minstrels  delighting  the  multitude. 

The  following  passage  from  Euripides  is  trans- 
lated by  Botsford.  It  is  the  passage  in  glorifi- 
cation of  Alcestis,  who  died  for  her  husband. 

"...  Of  thee  the  Muses'  votaries  shall  sing  on 
the  seven-stringed  mountain  shell,  and  in  hymns 
that  need  no  harp,  glorifying  thee,  oft  as  the 
spring  in  his  cycle  cometh  round  at  Sparta  in  that 

[69] 


^X^  The  Heart  of  Music  <}<:® 

Carnean  month  when  all  night  long  the  moon 
sails  high  o'erhead,  yea,  and  in  radiant  Athens 
the  happy  town.  So  glorious  a  theme  has  thy 
death  bequeathed  to  tuneful  bards.  Light  lie  the 
earth  above  thee,  lady!  " 

These  lines  are  interesting  for  more  than  one 
reason  other  than  their  intrinsic  beauty  and 
classical  value.  First,  they  show  the  path  of  the 
persistent  survival  of  the  Seven  Great  Tones  of 
Egypt,  as  well  as  pointing  to  the  existence  in 
Greece  as  well  as  Egypt  of  the  myth  of  the 
tortoise-shell  turned  by  a  god  into  a  lute.  Also, 
they  proclaim  the  place  held  by  lyric  music  in 
those  days,  showing  the  exalted  and  beautiful 
mission  of  the  stringed  instruments  to  have  been 
the  honour  of  noble  lives  and  the  elegy  of  lovely 
deaths. 

Said  one  ancient  Egyptian  priest  to  a  wise  Greek 
philosopher,  who  had  travelled  to  his  temple  on 
the  shore  of  the  Nile  to  sit  at  his  feet  and  learn 
of  him,  "You  Greeks  are  only  children,  talkative 
and  vain.     You  know  nothing  at  all  of  the  past." 

"  But,"  began  the  philosopher,  who  loved  his 
country  and  was  proud  of  her  cult  of  beauty 
and  her  heroes  and  her  lyric  art. 

The  Egyptian  priest  stopped  him  with  a  gesture, 
and  his  eyes  strayed  from  the  great  temple  to  the 

[70] 


«®  Apollo's  Message  «^ 

Nile,  and  still  beyond  to  the  divine  and  terrible 
desert,  where  the  gods  yet  walked  by  night. 

**  You  have  not  the  past,"  he  said. 

And  the  Greek  was  silenced. 

It  is  true  that  compared  with  Egypt,  Greece  has 
but  a  little  past,  but  what  other  nation  ever  leaped 
to  such  exquisite  fulfilment  in  a  little  past  as  she  ? 

And  in  the  Greek  hero  songs  there  is  some- 
thing infinitely  deep  and  stirring,  something  mov- 
ing and  vital  and  beautiful,  that  is  to  the  measured 
chants  of  old  Egypt  what  life  is  to  death. 

War  songs  were  always  an  important  feature 
of  the  military  life  of  the  Spartans  and  Trojans. 
Tyrtseus,  of  the  Second  Messenian  War,  wrote 
splendid  war  chants  which  the  Spartans  sang  as 
they  went  into  battle.  They  were  sung  in  camp 
at  meals  too,  and  the  captain  rewarded  the 
soldier  who  sang  best  with  an  extra  portion  of 
red  meat.  Alcman  wrote  songs  of  love  and 
wine,  though  he  too  was  a  Spartan,  and  we  do 
not  usually  associate  the  men  of  Sparta  with  much 
gratification  of  the  passions  or  even  the  needs  of 
humanity. 

The  rulers  of  ancient  Greece  were  all  more  or 
less  patrons  of  the  arts,  some  names  —  such  as 
Cleisthenes  and  Cypselus  —  shining  down  the 
centuries  as  illustrious  promoters  of  music   and 

[71] 


®»  The  Heart  of  Music  <®> 

poetry.  At  the  court  of  the  latter  was  the  famous 
poet  Arion,  who  composed  choral  songs  in  honour 
of  the  god  Dionysus,  which  were  sung  to  the 
accompaniment  of  harps.  It  was  out  of  these 
songs  that  the  drama  was  evolved  in  its  first 
primitive  forms  —  later  to  he  perfected.  In  this 
extraordinary  culmination  of  the  art  sense  of  an- 
tiquity, the  Greek  drama,  music  played  so  great 
a  part  that  it  is  safe  to  state  that  no  dramatic  rep- 
resentation ever  took  place  in  ancient  Greece 
without  its  incidental  music.  Like  the  Egyptians 
and  Chaldeans,  the  Greeks  invested  their  musical 
compositions  with  subtle  significances.  Different 
keys  were  supposed  to  portray  different  iTioods, 
and  the  finely  trained  ear  of  the  initiated  could 
anticipate  the  character  of  the  play  to  be  performed 
from  the  first  chords  sounded  upon  the  lyre  or 
harp. 

In  the  great  Athenian  theatre,  accommodating 
fifty  thousand  people,  the  Greeks  listened  eagerly 
to  what  was  real  melodrama,  or  drama  with 
music,  the  precursor  of  Wagner's  music  drama. 
Rockstro  says  that  Sophocles'  "  Antigone"  was  to 
the  Greeks  what  "  Tristan"  is  to  us.  It  was  the 
highest  dramatic  and  musical  expression  of  the 
art  mood  of  the  day.  Rockstro  adds  this  most 
interesting  paragraph:  ' '  We  think  it  a  great  thing 

[72] 


&iX^  Apollo's  Message  <¥> 

that  a  devoted  lover  of  art  should  undertake  a 
fatiguing  and  expensive  journey  to  the  dullest  of 
German  tow^ns  for  the  sole  purpose  of  listening 
to  a  performance  of  'Parsifal'  or  the  'Trilogy.' 
And  it  is  a  great  thing.  But  what  are  we  to 
think  of  travellers  from  distant  lands,  who,  after 
undertaking  a  long  and  perilous  journey  to  Athens, 
took  their  places  in  the  great  Senecan  theatre  on 
the  evening  before  the  performance  and  sat  there, 
in  patient  expectation,  during  the  entire  night?" 
But  the  purest  form  in  which  the  heart  of 
music  found  expression  was  in  lyric  poetry,  for 
which,  among  other  marvels,  the  land  grew  mem- 
orable. This  of  course  means,  literally,  song 
accompanied  by  the  lyre,  and  it  called  into  play 
the  highest  musical  development  of  the  period. 
The  miore  illustrious  of  the  lyric  singers  travelled 
from  court  to  court,  honoured  and  welcomed 
everywhere,  and  adding  leaves  to  their  laurel 
wreaths  with  each  fresh  ode,  love  ballad,  or  song 
of  war.  The  names  of  Alcseus  of  Lesbos,  Sappho, 
the  Spartan  Alcman,  Simonides  of  Ceos,  Bac- 
chylides  his  nephew,  and  Pindar  of  Boeotia  are 
synonymous  for  Greek  song.  They  all  composed 
lyric  poetry  and  music  of  rare  loveliness,  and  were 
beloved  by  the  Greek  people.  Simonides  was 
chiefly  famed   for  patriotic   songs,  as   those   of 

[73] 


<K>  The  Heart  of  Music  C®> 

Alcaeus  and  Sappho  were  given  over  to  the  praise 
of  love  and  other  gentle  things.  When  the  Greeks 
triumphed  in  their  war  with  the  Romans  they 
called  upon  Simonides  to  make  a  song  of  it,  and 
Simonides  sang  of  the  dead  heroes  whose  lives  had 
bought  back  the  liberty  of  Greece,  though  then  he 
was  very  old  and  his  hand  shook  upon  the  lyre. 

Music  grew  in  time  to  be  associated  in  chief 
with  the  religion  of  the  land,  and,  as  in  the  East, 
became  the  inseparable  adjunct  of  all  sacred  rites 
and  ceremonies.  Apollo,  Dionysus,  and  Orpheus 
were  worshipped  far  and  wide,  and  oracles  were 
established  among  the  hills.  Apollo  was  hailed  as 
the  Great  Purifier,  the  Great  Cleanser,  the  Great 
Uplifter,  and  his  divine  message  was  supposed  to 
come  through  song.  High  up  among  the  trees 
and  rocks  of  Mount  Parnassus,  with  the  purple 
valleys  below  and  the  sea  blue  in  the  distance, 
stood  the  Temple  of  Delphi,  dedicated  to  Apollo. 
\olcanic  fire  and  steam  issued  from  a  crevice 
within,  and  the  Pythia,  or  oracle,  sat  there  en- 
veloped in  the  supposed  sacred  smoke  and  chanted 
or  sang  the  will  of  the  god. 

' '  There  on  the  holy  tripod  sits  the  Delphian 
priestess,"  we  find  in  Euripides,  "chanting  to 
the  ears  of  Hellas  in  numbers  loud  whate'er 
Apollo  doth  proclaim." 

[7M 


r 


<^>  Apollo's  Message  «» 

And  his  message  seems  to  have  been  a  beautiful 
one,  inciting  men  to  brave  lives  and  brave  deaths, 
to  fortitude,  loyalty,  and  know^ledge,  and  to  the 
w^orship  of  lovely  things  of  mind  and  body  alike. 
For  a  space,  at  least,  the  strings  of  music  could 
vibrate  to  a  worthy  melody,  could  know^  them- 
selves dedicated  to  sweet  uses  and  fine  ends. 
Though  her  prostitution  was  soon  to  recom- 
mence. Music  knew  her  brief  interval  of  stately 
welfare,  worshipping  the  high  gods  and  "  singing 
the  deeds  of  the  heroes." 


[75] 


Qjn  Jc^agan  oJiDome 


"Would  justice  be  promoted,  or  would  they  serve  on  the  Knights' 
commissions  for  the  honourable  office  of  a  judge,  because  they  had 
listened  with  critical  sagacity  to  effeminate  strains  of  music  and  sweet 
voices  ?  "  —  Tacitus. 


VI.  —  In  Pagan  Rome 


1  HE  records  of  the  past  show  such  remarkable 
fluctuations  in  the  development  of  music  that  the 
reasoning  mind  becomes  apprehensive  in  contem- 
plating them.  As  the  art  growls  to  fuller  com- 
pletion and  perfection  to-day,  one  fears  more  and 
more  a  corresponding  fall,  — some  sudden  w^hirl 
backward  into  the  ultra-primitive, — even  into 
the  possibility  of  the  revival  of  the  bear's  sinew 
and  the  bow  !  One  is  constrained  to  think  this 
as  one  looks  at  the  strange  chronicle  of  heights 
and  depths.  First  Egypt  and  wisdom  ;  then 
Babylonia  and  madness  ;  then  Greece  and  beauty ; 
finally  Rome  and  decadence. 

And  so  we  come  to  the  next  stage  in  the  un- 
folding of  music,  —  an  advance  in  importance, 
but  a  retreat  in  genuine  value.  With  the  tides 
of  progress  we  will  journey  from  Greece  to  Rome 
and  consort  with  senators  and  ladies,  emperors 
and  slaves,  in  the  days  of  the  Caesars. 

The  philosophers  of  ancient  Rome  appear  to 
have  held  music  in  but  low  esteem.  That  there 
could  be  dignity  in  it  as  an  art,  or  beauty  as  an 
influence,  was  a  proposition  inconceivable  to  their 

[79] 


<K3sf  The  Heart  of  Music  <:^> 

judicial  minds.  And  one  can  hardly  marvel  at 
this  standpoint,  when  one  sees  the  retrogression 
of  the  tonal  craft  with  the  rise  of  the  empire. 

To  men  of  wisdom  and  balance,  albeit  men 
essentially  of  their  day  and  its  limitations  in 
outlook  and  prophetic  perceptions,  the  art  of 
song,  the  gift  of  playing  on  lyre  and  harp  and 
lute,  must  be  associated  irrevocably  with  the 
lower  elements  of  their  period  and  their  city. 
They  must  reasonably  consider  this  trick  of 
sound-making  a  thing  fit  only  for  the  vain  and 
brutal  whims  of  a  hero,  or  the  excitation  of  a 
crowd  of  dissolute  youth  ;  for  they  saw  it  used 
for  no  other  purpose.  And  what  were  they, 
cynical,  learned  men,  versed  in  the  dissection  of 
character  and  the  denunciation  of  conditions, 
to  waste  time  in  analysing  the  potentialities  of  an 
art  they  despised  ? 

During  the  early  fighting  days  of  their  mag- 
nificent history  the  Romans  doubtless  possessed 
fine  primitive  chants,  crude  harps,  and  a  certain 
robust,  if  elementary,  musical  sense,  like  most 
young  peoples.  But  as  the  civilisation  of  the 
empire  grew  and  grew,  the  refinement  and 
cultivation  of  the  tonal  art  led  as  inevitably  to 
its  actual  deterioration  as  the  luxury  and  aesthet- 
icism  of  the  nation  led  to  its  degeneracy  ;    even 

[80] 


«^  In  Pagan  Rome  ®» 

as  other  ancient  monarchies  crumbled  and  died 
in  a  blaze  of  voluptuous  and  ineffectual  flame, — 
as  Greece  decayed  to  decadence, — so  Rome  too, 
most  arrogant  of  powers,  pulled  rose  garlands 
over  her  shirt  of  mail  and  learned  to  play  the 
fidicula   and  lute. 

This  fidicula,  a  lyre,  is  generally  considered 
the  legitimate  ancestor  of  the  violin  of  to-day. 
This  theory,  of  course,  is  based  on  the  assump- 
tion that  the  instrument  was  evolved  gradually 
in  Occidental  countries,  and  not  imported  from 
the  East,  as  many  persons  believe,  during  the 
Crusades  by  the  Moorish  occupation  of  Spain, 
and  through  other  inroads  of  Oriental  civilisation 
upon  Europe.  The  word  ' '  fidicula  "  of  the  ancient 
Romans  was  derived  primarily  from  Jides,  a 
string,  and  meant  simply  an  instrument  with 
strings.  It  was  quite  an  ordinary  lyre,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  closely  resembling  the  instruments  of 
Egypt,  Assyria,  Phoenicia,  and  Greece.  It  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  particularly  remarkable 
either  in  construction  or  effect.  Its  chief  value 
as  a  signboard  of  instrumental  development  is  the 
peculiarly  prominent  place  it  held  in  the  social 
and  political  life  of  Rome.  There  is  also  a  cer- 
tain interest  in  the  fact  that  this  primitive  lyre, 
wherein    there    seems    to    have  been    no    single 

[8i] 


sCK)s  The  Heart  of  Music  <gO 

improvement  or  progression  beyond  the  crude 
Chaldean  instruments,  should  be  chosen  by  so 
many  wise  persons  as  the  recognised  parent  stem 
of  the  whole  violin  family.  This  theory  is  most 
clearly  presented  by  the  following  table  compiled 
by  Mr.  Payne : 


LATIN  FIDES:  A  STRING 

Diminutive 
Fidicula 

! 


Southern  Group 
(Low  Latin) 


Fidiula     or     Fidiula 

(also  Vitula, 

Vidula,  Vidella, 

Figella,  etc. 


Mediaeval 

French 

Vielle 

(Viella) 


Provencal 

Viola 
Viula 


Italian 

Vibla 

French  Viole 

English  Viol 

1 


Northern  Group 

(Old  French) 

Fideille 

I 


Anglo- 
Saxon 
Fithele 

Scottish 
Fithel 


Diminutive 

Violino 
Ft.  Violon 


Augmentative 
Violone 

Diminutive 

Violoncello 


I 

Mediaeval 

English 

Fidel 


Modern 
English 
Fiddle 


High 

German 

Fiedel 

Low 

German 

Vedel 


Probably  the  most  ignoble,  but  at  the  same 
time  the  most  conspicuous  era  of  the  fidicula, 
was   the   reign    of   Nero.       To    that   marvellous 

[83] 


«>  In  Pagan  Rome  <X> 

monster  belongs  the  distinction  of  having  glorified 
and  debased  the  lyric  art  to  a  height  of  honour 
and  a  depth  of  dishonour  achieved  by  no  other 
man.  Nero  built  political  parties  around  the 
performance  of  a  melody,  erected  or  blasted  great 
houses  by  a  song,  burned  a  city  to  the  sound  of 
a  fidicula.  Nero  set  the  martyrdom  of  the 
Christians  to  music,  tortured  children  amid  a 
quiver  of  silver  tones,  and  sang  pretty  songs  in 
harmony  with  the  roar  of  the  lions  in  the  arena. 
Nero  filled  voluptuous  thickets  w^ith  music,  and 
moved  the  fagged  senses  of  the  Roman  youth 
with  the  insidious  thrill  of  smitten  lute  strings. 
Nero  made  public  performances  of  music  a 
national  business,  causing  the  very  Senate  of 
the  Imperial  City  to  vote  to  him  the  laurel  crown 
of  song.  What  other  man  has  done  these  things  ? 
Nero's  favouritisms  were  largely  based  on  some 
excellence  in  music.  When  he  promoted  Piso, 
the  tragedian,  to  a  higher  position,  it  was  because 
he  could  sing.  ' '  It  matters  not  as  to  the  dis- 
grace," says  Flabus,  bitterly,  "  if  a  harp  player 
be  removed  and  a  tragic  actor  succeed  him." 

The  paradox  is  rather  extraordinary,  when  one 
considers  it  soberly.  In  Egypt  music  was  a 
great  religous  influence,  in  Assyria  and  Phoenicia  a 
power  for  evil,  in  Greece  an  incentive  to  idealism, 

[83] 


<»  The  Heart  of  Music  <}sO 

but  in  Rome  it  was  all  three,  and  a  civic  force 
as  well.  The  priests  of  Egypt  used  music  in 
their  ceremonies ;  so  did  the  vestals  of  Rome. 
The  Babylonians  played  on  the  unholy  passions 
of  men  with  harp  tones  and  insinuating  melo- 
dies ;  so  did  the  slaves  that  the  emperor  caused 
to  play  in  the  floating  barges  loaded  with  naked 
women.  The  Greeks  made  excellence  in  the 
lyric  art  a  high  distinction  ;  the  Romans  carried 
this  to  violent  extremes. 

The  wise  men  of  Rome,  the  senators  and 
philosophers,  the  persons  of  dignity  and  serious- 
ness, loathed  the  public  exhibitions  of  Nero's 
conceit  and  weakness.  But  they  were  forced  to 
see  them,  and  worse,  to  applaud  them. 

At  the  harp-playing  contests  which  the  emperor 
organised,  and  in  which  he  invariably  appeared 
and  equally  invariably  won,  the  solemnity  of  a 
religious  rite  accompanied  the  entire  performance. 
The  contestants,  judges,  senators,  and  other  offici- 
atinof  dio^nitaries  would  file  onto  the  sta^^re.      One 

Do  o 

by  one  the  bards  would  bend  the  knee  to  the 
judges  and  the  audience,  all  of  whom  were 
expected  to  applaud.  ' '  Last  of  all,'  says  Tacitus, 
"  the  emperor  himself  came  on  the  stage,  tuning 
his  lute  with  elaborate  care,  and  trying  his  voice 
with  his  attendants." 
[84] 


«^  In  Pagan  Rome  <^ 

The  lute  of  Nero  was  not  unlike  the  Oriental 
tamboura  in  shape.  It  is  curious  that  Tacitus 
speaks  of  it,  for  it  is  not  beheved  to  have  been 
Nero's  favourite  instrument.  The  thing  that  he 
preferred  mostly  and  forced  all  men  to  praise 
was  the  fidicula. 

Hard  and   fast  rules  were  made  for  the  song 
contests,  most   of  them    governing   questions  of 
deportment    rather    than    the    art    itself.        The 
minstrels  could  not  sit  during  the  trial.      They 
could  not  clear  their  throats,    cough,  blow  their 
noses,  or  wipe  away  a  drop  of  perspiration.     They 
must  never  forget  the  countless  bows  and  gestures 
at  fittmg  moments.      There  were  great  numbers 
of  further  forms  and  regulations  of  this  character, 
none  of  them  having  the  slightest  connection  with 
the    music    itself.       The    weary    populace    was 
obhged  to  sit  through  interminable  hours  Ksten- 
mg  to  Nero  and  his  foils  play  upon  the  lyre  and 
lute,    and  watching  their    ridiculous    formalities 
and  ceremonious    exchange   of  courtesies.      The 
unfortunate  Vespasian  went  to  sleep  during  one 
of  these  concerts,  and  not  only  lost  Nero's  favour, 
but  was  insulted  by  Phoibes,  a  freed  slave,  into 
the  bargain.      Such   was    the   demoraHsation    in 
the  imperial  audiences. 

Many  women  of  high  birth,  great  senators,  and 

[8^] 


«^  The  Heart  of  Music  Os> 

elderly,  dignified  persons  of  all  sorts  were  forced 
by  Nero  to  appear  in  theatrical  performances 
before  the  public,  to  dance,  sing,  and  play  parts 
whether  they  were  ashamed  of  it  or  not. 

The  use  of  music  in  the  feasts  and  orgies  of  the 
Romans  has  been  written  of  so  extensively  that  it 
is  hardly  necessary  to  more  than  touch  upon  it 
here.  At  these  banquets  there  was  a  great  deal 
of  Eastern  music.  Oriental  girls,  brought  from 
Egypt  and  Arabia  for  the  purpose,  would  play 
their  native  tamboura  and  sistrum  and  dance 
suggestive  dances.  Here  was  but  one  of  the 
thousand  ways  for  Eastern  music  to  creep  into 
the  Occident. 

Gibbon  speaks  of  ' '  the  dark-skinned  daughters 
of  Isis,  with  drum  and  timbrel  and  wanton  mein," 
and  adds  that  Rome  was  a  veritable  Rabel  of 
foreign  tongues,  a  place  where  every  known  influ- 
ence for  evil  from  every  land  near  and  far  was 
concentrated  upon  the  vitiating  of  the  already 
demoralised  spirit  of  the  Roman  people.  In 
the  streets,  he  continues,  thronged  "priests  of 
Cybele  with  their  wild  dances  and  discordant 
cries,  .  .  .  worshippers  of  the  great  goddess  Diana  ; 
barbarian  captives  with  the  rites  of  Teuton  priests  ; 
Syrians,  Jews,  Chaldean  astrologers,  and  Thes- 
salian  sorcerers." 

[86] 


<sO  In  Pagan  Rome  <X> 

The  great  historian  has  translated  one  of 
Ammianus  MarcelKnus'  arraignments  in  two 
lines :  "In  their  palaces  sound  is  preferred  to 
sense,  and  the  care  of  the  body  to  that  of  the 
mind.  " 

Alas  !  poor  "  sound,"  poor  spirit  of  music !  so 
hopelessly,  helplessly,  indissolubly  associated 
with  all  that  was  most  vicious  and  useless  in  a 
day  of  vice  and  emptiness  I  At  the  great  gambling 
bouts  which  Rome  loved  the  dice  was  flung  to  an 
accompaniment  of  stringed  music  played  by  slaves 
and  professional  musicians.  Wine  was  drunk  to 
the  measures  of  gay  songs,  and  all  the  evil  that 
was  in  a  notoriously  evil  city  seemed  associated 
with  some  form  of  music. 

To  a  great  burst  of  jangled,  sweeping,  insistent, 
clamorous  harmonies  Rome  thundered  on  to  her 
downfall. 

"  0  haughty  Rome,"  cries  the  Sibylline  oracle, 
• '  the  divine  chastisement  shall  come  upon 
thee  ;  fire  shall  consume  thee ;  thy  wealth  shall 
perish  ;  foxes  and  wolves  shall  dwell  among  thy 
ruins.  And  then  what  land  that  thou  hast  en- 
slaved shall  be  thy  ally  ;  and  which  of  thy  gods 
shall  save  thee  ?  For  there  shall  be  confusion 
over  the  face  of  the  whole  earth,  and  the  fall  of 
cities  shall  come." 

-      -         [87] 


«»  The  Heart  of  Music  <X> 

One  readily  can  conjure  up  scenes  in  plenty 
illustrating  the  muffled  and  broken  message  of 
the  Heart  of  Music  in  those  unregenerate  days. 
Surely  it  beat  in  harmony  with  strange  sounds 
then  :  the  click  of  dice,  the  drip  of  wine,  the 
pompous  voices  of  senators  and  consuls,  the 
snarls  of  savage  beasts,  the  cries  of  tortured 
men,  the  echoes  of  laughter,  weeping,  kisses, 
curses,    and  prayers. 

So  music  lived  and  throbbed,  and  soared  and 
sank,  in  this  atmosphere  of  paradoxes,  this  atmos- 
phere of  beauty  and  misery,  feasting  and  suffer- 
ing, solemnity  and  levity. 

"  Tear  by  sacred  tear,"  says  Swinburne  in  his 
description  of  the  kneeling  figure  of  Italy, 

"  Fell  from  her  eyes  as  flowers  or  notes  that  fall 
In  some  slain  feaster's  hall 
Wherein  mid  music  and  melodious  breath 
Men  singing  have  seen  death  1  " 


[88] 


I 


c/'ke  Jjaxk  JjayA 


-  -  n 


'  Soon  will  it  be 
That  sickness  or  sword-blade 
Shear  thy  strength  from  thee, 
Or  the  fire  ring  thee. 
Or  the  flood  whelm  thee, 
Or  the  sword  grip  thee. 
Or  the  arrow  hit  thee, 
Or  age  o'ertake  thee, 
And  thine  eye's  brightness 
Sink  down  in  darkness." 

Ancient  Chant  sung  by  Hero  Kings 
to  accompaniment  of  the  Crwth. 


VII.  — The  Dark  Days 


vJUR  next  step  onward  shows  us  a  curious 
parting  of  the  ways  so  far  as  violin  history  is 
concerned.  Hitherto  the  varying  opinions  held  by 
learned  persons  regarding  the  origin  of  the  queen 
of  instruments  have  been  more  or  less  negative, 
or  at  least  nominal,  quantities.  We  could  accept 
whichever  we  chose  without  leaving  our  direct 
path  of  research.  But  after  the  Roman  era  the 
points  in  question  become  strangely  active,  each 
requiring  a  separate  attention  and  a  faithful  lamp 
of  inquiry.  There  are  three  theories  concerning 
the  growth  and  development  of  the  violin:  the 
first,  that  it  grew  directly  from  Roman  and  Greek 
instruments,  without  external  augmentation;  the 
second,  that  it  owes  its  debt  of  parentage  para- 
mountly  to  the  crwth  of  the  early  Britons;  the 
third,  that  it  was  introduced  into  Europe  dur- 
ing the  Crusades  and  was  of  frankly  Oriental 
origin.  It  will  be  seen  readily  that  it  is  neces- 
sary to  consider  these  three  propositions  with 
uniform  respect. 

If  we  consider  the  first  theory  alone,  we  must 
confine   ourselves   to   the  region   of  the   Roman 

[91] 


<»  The  Heart  of  Music  <K> 

empire  and  its  immediate  influence  and  control 
for  a  space.  When  Rome  fell,  a  black  plague 
of  ignorance,  superstition,  and  wretchedness  de- 
scended upon  the  land.  We  do  not  say  that  it 
was  worse,  or  as  evil,  as  the  excesses  of  the 
Empire,  for  at  least  it  was  a  fermenting  time,  a 
period  of  hidden  growth  and  unseen  seeding ; 
but  be  all  this  as  it  may  it  was  a  muffling  hand 
upon  the  clear  voices  of  expansion  and  of  art. 
For  the  first  time  since  it  began  to  beat,  the 
Heart  of  Music  fell  silent.  Not  death,  but  a  sick 
swooning  that  seemed  almost  death,  stilled  its 
eager  pulses  and  hushed  alike  the  chant  of  praise 
and  the  song  of  sin.  The  earth  cowered  and 
groaned  in  the  black  grip  of  these  dark  centuries. 
Even  the  historians  write  of  them  impressively  — 
moved  perhaps  by  a  certain  terror  that  clings 
there  even  now,  after  the  levelling,  grinding 
touch  of  time. 

War,  outrage,  lawlessness,  and  brutality  reduced 
civilisation  to  a  primitive  basis.  Every  one  ex- 
pected to  be  killed  at  any  moment.  Men  ventured 
from  home  furtively,  however  honest  or  necessary 
their  business,  and  doubtless  kept  an  eye  on  a  safe 
cover  or  sanctuary  all  the  while.  But,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  not  even  sanctuary  was  inviolate  in  those 
desperate  days.     Christianity  was  young  and  none 

[92] 


«:^  The  Dark  Days  <¥> 

too  strong  in  act,  however  puissant  in  spirit, 
against  the  hosts  of  lust  and  blood  and  darkness. 
Churches  fell  in  ruins,  and  few  cared  that  the 
altars  were  dust.  Men  were  robbed  and  could 
find  no  redress.  The  system  of  allodial  tenure 
did  indeed  give  a  man  lands  and  fortress  of  his 
own,  but  he  had  no  protection  for  the  holding 
of  them  beyond  his  good  sword  and  what  faith- 
ful vassals  he  might  muster.  They  were  apt  to 
be  wrested  from  him  in  a  single  night  by  some 
neighbour  temporarily  in  power. 

John  Lord,  the  historian,  says  that  this  period, 
extending  from  the  fall  of  the  Empire  until  the 
end  of  the  eighth  and  beginning  of  the  ninth 
centuries,  was  the  blackest  and  dreariest  in  history 
—  there  was  no  art,  there  was  no  literature,  there 
was  no  music.  Men  lived  beneath  a  deadly  fear. 
God  might  be  believed  in  by  a  few,  the  Devil 
must  be  believed  in  by  every  one.  The  clean, 
gay,  wholesome  things  of  life  were  forgotten  in 
a  damp,  gray  wretchedness.  Men  sang  grave- 
chants  and  death-songs  instead  of  love  lays  and 
drinking  catches.  The  sky  was  dark  and  the 
future  dim,  and  there  were  some  who  dreamed 
daily  that  the  sun  was  never  again  to  shine. 

In  the  year  one  thousand  the  end  of  the  world 
was  prophesied,  and  most  earnestly  and  abjectly 

[93] 


«»  The  Heart  of  Music  <» 

expected  by  the  people.  Ahhough  the  end  of  the 
world  failed  to  arrive,  in  spite  of  grave  and  not- 
to-be  questioned  portents,  a  great  famine  did. 
For  nearly  three  years  (loSo-ioSs)  there  w^ere 
no  seedtimes  and  no  harvests.  Wolves  came  in 
from  the  forests  and  prowled  through  the  streets 
of  towns  and  cities.  Men  ate  each  other  as  they 
died,  and  even  robbed  graves  in  their  mad  effort 
to  sustain  life.  And  these  things  happened, 
remember,  less  than  fifty  years  before  the  era  of 
the  gay  troubadours. 

On  the  continent,  where  the  Old  Empire  had 
so  long  held  sway,  the  desolation  was  complete. 
The  world  was  dark  under  the  contemporaneous 
reigns  of  the  Saxon  kings  in  England,  but  not 
quite  so  black.  A  certain  robust  element  in  the 
Anglo-Saxon  vitality,  a  virility  not  to  be  questioned 
nor  conquered,  worked  on  toward  a  national  ful- 
filment of  strength.  In  Europe  the  spell  was 
unbroken,  a  lethargy  and  inanition  of  despair 
locked  the  people,  and  a  bitter  fanaticism  gripped 
those  in  authority.  The  roses  almost  forgot  to 
bloom,  and  when  people  prayed  it  was  only  to 
fend  off  the  evil  spirits  that  were  believed  to  throng 
the  blackness  of  night  with  a  dark  and  ghoulish 
purpose,  and  the  magic  arts  of  the  Devil  at  their 
aid. 

[9^] 


<®>  The  Dark  Days  «^ 

Robbery  and  piracy  went  in  hand  with  hunting 
and  legitimate  fighting.  Men  were  on  a  plane 
with  animals  and  gratified  their  heinous  appetites 
with  as  little  hesitation  as  the  beasts  of  the  woods 
and  waste-lands.  In  this  time  the  mission  of 
string  music  was  nil,  —  nullified  by  the  unpro- 
ductive and  unresponsive  elements  with  which  it 
had  to  combat,  and  over  which  it  would  have  had 
to  rise  exultant  to  be  heard  at  all. 

"Music  was  only  a  tinkle  then,"  say  the  wise 
ones,  and  yet  suddenly  the  impossible  was  accom- 
plished; the  violin,  most  advanced  of  instruments, 
was  in  use,  and  soon  was  even  in  a  fair  way  to 
its  perfection.  Just  so  no  great  results  arrive, 
abruptly  and  sublimely,  in  the  midst  of  struggles 
of  development  and  exposition. 

The  growing  power  of  the  Christian  Church 
was  beginning  to  engulf  music  and  materially  to 
limit  its  scope.  Chants  took  the  place  of  the  free 
folk-songs  of  the  people,  and  it  was  considered 
most  reprehensible  to  play  stringed  instruments. 
Many  priests  forbade  all  forms  of  music  except 
religious  intoning  and  the  most  austere  and  un- 
melodious  hymns.  Even  the  organs,  which  in 
their  first  primitive  forms  were  known  as  the 
organum  pneumaticum  (pneumatic  organ)  and  the 
organum  hydraulicum  (water  organ),  were  con- 

[95] 


@v>  The  Heart  of  Music  @v® 

sidered  purely  secular  instruments.  Nero  had 
possessed  some  of  them,  and  they,  like  stringed 
instruments,  had  become  associated  with  evil  and 
dowered  with  wild  records.  It  was  not  until  the 
eleventh  century  that  the  organ  was  introduced  into 
church  ceremonies.  Occasionally,  however,  some 
friar  or  prelate,  like  the  good  monk  Thotilo  or 
Notker  Balbulus  of  St.  Gall,  gave  up  the  best  of 
his  days  to  the  development  of  music,  and  nearly 
all  the  monasteries  did  much  toward  completing 
and  sustaining  the  art  of  musical  construction  and 
notation.  It  was  the  Heart  of  Music,  the  stringed 
lyricism  of  the  world,  which  was  shut  away.  That 
was  bound  to  wait  for  another  swing  of  the  pen- 
dulum, though  the  pedantry  and  academical  aus- 
terity of  the  very  monks  who  condemned  it  were 
building  the  foundations  for  its  future  dwelling. 

The  first  bow  instruments  of  Southern  Europe 
appeared  in  the  eleventh  century,  played  by 
wandering  singers  and  some  few  more  exalted 
minstrels.  But  meanwhile  another  little  embryo 
violin  had  been  flourishing  in  the  North  for  nearly 
four  centuries,  and  this  fact  brings  us  to  the  second 
theory  concerning  the  growth  of  the  violin. 

Yenantius  Fortunatus,  Bishop  of  Poitiers,  says: 

"  Let  the  Roman  delight  in  his  lyre,  the  barbarian  in  his  harp, 
The  Greek  in  the  Ijre  of  his  heroes,  the  Briton  in  his  Ghrotta." 

[96] 


®X®  The  Dark  Days  <:®> 

So  at  a  time  when  the  Assyrians  and  Greeks 
and  people  of  the  Empire  had  their  various  stringed 
instruments,  the  CeUs  were  not  behind  in  musical 
development.  It  is,  however,  worth  noting  that 
those  extraordinary  people,  the  Phoenicians  — 
cosmic  bees  carrying  pollen  between  nations 
— had  invaded  Wales  at  a  much  earlier  period  and 
brought  with  them,  as  usual,  a  love  for  adorn- 
ment and  the  rudiments  of  Eastern  culture. 

In  the  native  Welsh  the  lyre,  adopted  by  the 
Britons  as  their  national  instrument,  was  called 
crwth  (pronounced  crooth).  But  with  the  strong 
Roman  colouring  that  affected  all  Britons  so  in- 
tensely, the  word  crwth  became  Latinised  into 
chrotta.  In  the  later  records  it  is  sometimes 
called  the  one  and  sometimes  the  other. 

To  the  early  Britons  this  instrument  was  a  never 
failing  inspiration  and  spur.  In  war  the  armies 
were  always  accompanied  by  musicians  and 
singers,  in  order  that,  should  their  zeal  flag,  they 
might  be  played  on  into  the  battle  by  war-songs 
and  clanging  strings. 

Diodorus  Siculus  says:  "  With  instruments  like 
lyres  in  their  hands,  the  British  Minstrels  advanced 
at  the  head  of  their  armies." 

In  those  primitive,  barbaric  days,  when  existence 
was  a  battle,   when  every  man's  hand  was   set 

[97] 


«13?  The  Heart  of  Music  <m> 

against  the  world,  and  even  the  elements  were 
looked  upon  as  conspiring  enemies,  music  played 
a  strange,  crude,  bat  very  vital  part. 
Butler  says,  in  his  "  Hudibras": 

' '  r  the  midst  of  all  this  warlike  rabble 
Crowden  marched,  expert  and  able." 

Crowden,  of  course,  means  fiddlers.  — the  players 
of  crowds  or  crwths . 

Religion  was  of  course  pantheistic,  as  with  all 
barbaric  races.  The  Teutonic  gods  —  Wodin, 
Freio,  Thor,  and  the  rest — were  worshipped,  as 
well  as  other  even  more  mystical  and  picturesque 
deities  —  Eostre,  the  dawn  goddess,  Weland  the 
Forger,  Egil  the  Archer,  Nicor,  the  shy,  sly  spirit 
of  springs  and  pools,  and  \^yrd,  the  terrible  and 
mysterious  W  oman  of  Death. 

Giraldus  Cambrensis  tells  us  that  the  tuning  of 
the  crwth  was  as  follows  : 


fl 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

V       -^                                                           II 

X 

x^ 

J 

fj 

rh 

1 

J: 

1 

\\)        1                       !                    ;                 1                    ^                    !        1 

J 

^ 

-^ 

d: 

the  last  two  strings  being  open.  A  few  experi- 
mentary  variations  (if  so  they  could  be  called!) 
on  these  three  notes  are  very  suggestive  of  the 
character  of  the  music  originally  played  upon  this 
instrument.      The  only  combinations  possible  are 

[98] 


«©  The  Dark  Days  <)©> 

plaintive,  monotonous,  and  distinctly  Oriental  in 
character.  The  bow  was  triangular,  and  the 
bridge  so  low  that  it  was  very  difficult  to  play 
without  striking  all  the  strings  at  once. 

There  are  those,  and  no  few  persons  either, 
who  declare  that  neither  the  crwth  nor  yet  its 
developed  phoenix,  which  rose  from  its  own  ashes 
and  was  played  with  a  bow  throughout  England, 
was  the  true  ancestor  of  the  violin.  These 
authorities  insist  that  the  evolution  of  the  fiddle 
took  place  in  the  South,  not  the  North.  But 
there  will  always  be  numberless  sides,  distinct 
as  the  facets  of  a  diamond,  to  every  such 
question. 

We  have  now  seen  the  evolution  of  the  crwth 
from  a  harp  to  a  fiddle  —  a  rather  remarkable 
example  of  development,  by  the  by.  As  a  rule, 
when  an  instrument  changes  its  character  it 
changes  its  name.  Thus  the  monochord  became 
a  lyre,  the  pipe  a  trumpet,  the  harpsichord  a 
piano.  But  the  crwth  remained  a  crwth  through 
all  its  phases  and  manifestations,  as  though  its 
individuality  was  too  strong  and  insistent  to  be 
lost  merely  through  a  few  changes  in  form  and 
treatment.  The  variations  from  crwth  to  crowd 
and  cruit  and  so  on  were  purely  a  matter  of 
language  and  inevitable  dialectic  changes. 

[99] 


©X^  The  Heart  of  Music  <®> 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  persistence  of  the 
name  crwth  is  doubly  or  trebly  curious  and  inter- 
esting for  these  reasons.  In  Welsh,  and  the  in- 
strument was  essentially  Welsh  in  origin,  the  word 
crwth  signifies  ' '  a  bulging  box, " — not  a  bad  prim- 
itive description  of  the  curving  violin-body.  Yet 
when  we  first  meet  the  crwth  it  is  in  the  form 
of  a  lyre.  This  suggests  either  some  curious 
error  in  the  old  records,  a  coincidence  in  the 
matter  of  name  and  description,  or  the  possibility 
that  the  crwth,  when  first  introduced  into  Britain 
by  the  Phoenicians,  had  a  hollow  body  and  sound- 
board like  the  Egyptian  nefru  and  nebel  and  the 
other  Oriental  lutes  and  tambouras.  It  would  be 
a  curious  example  in  evolution  if  it  were  true  that 
the  crwth  developed  backward,  as  it  were,  into  a 
primitive  lyre  before  returning  to  its  original  form 
and  the  ultimate  justification  of  its  name. 

These  primitive  Northerners  were  far  from  being 
without  a  musical  system,  and  they  were  the  first 
race  in  the  world  to  have  a  professional  organisa- 
tion of  musicians.  The  position  of  the  ' '  Scops  " 
was  defined  by  special  laws  in  g/io,  made  by 
Howel  Dha,  the  Welsh  king.  These  laws  speci- 
fied what  the  Scops  were  entitled  to — it  really 
amounted  to  being  what  they  were  not  entitled  to 
—  and  their  rights  and  duties  in  general. 

[loo] 


©:»  The  Dark  Days  <)iC«  . 

In  iioo  GrifFyd  ap  Cynan,  Prince  of  Wales, 
ordered  a  congress  of  masters  of  music  and  pre- 
sided over  it  himself.  The  congress  decided  that 
the  old  Welsh  melodies  and  Druidical  chants  should 
be  preserved,  and  a  song  book  was  made  up  bv 
some  of  the  musicians  who  had  been  present  at 
the  congress.  The  book  was  in  roughest  manu- 
script, but  it  contained  a  number  of  melodies  which 
undoubtedly  had  been  used  as  accompaniments 
to  some  of  the  mysterious  ceremonies  of  the 
Druids,  as  well  as  the  first  harp  exercises  of  the 
world. 

These  people,  who  lived  and  died  among  the 
dark  Northern  forests,  by  the  dim  lakes  and 
spirit-haunted  marshes,  spent  their  days  in  com- 
munion with  a  thousand  ghostly  shapes  of  their 
own  invention.  They  did  not  worship  their  gods 
in  white  linen  like  the  priests  of  Egypt,  nor  on 
golden  altars  like  the  disciples  of  Ashtoroth,  nor 
with  oracles  and  sacred  fire  like  the  Greeks  at 
Delphi,  nor  with  hosts  of  vestals  and  much 
shameless  sin  like  the  limited  collection  of  relig- 
ious folk  in  Rome.  They  lived  their  daily  life 
in  the  fear  and  reverence  of  the  mist-shapes  of 
their  immortals.  They  shivered  at  the  marsh- 
fire  and  called  it  the  Will  o'  the  Wisp  reeking 
men's  souls.     In  every  stream  lurked  the  Necker, 

[lOl] 


^^^•The  Heart  of  Music  C®"^ 

— the  pale  children  of  Nicor.  Men  hurried 
home  through  the  dusk  casting  furtive  glances 
backward  as  they  went,  lest  the  Dark  God,  Tiw, 
be  at  their  shoulders, — Tiw,  to  meet  with  whom 
mieant  death  that  was  swift  and  terrible.  No 
people  carried  their  mythology  about  with  them, 
in  intimate,  childish  ways,  like  these  Northern 
people. 

Green  says  that  their  lives  were  of  "  a  Homeric 
simplicity  and  dignity."  He  adds  further  that 
the  rough  castles,  coarse  scenes,  and  elementary 
civilisation  of  these  early  chieftains  and  kings 
were  far  from  being  void  of  a  rude  beauty.  Men 
and  women  alike  possessed  strength  and  health, 
and  a  passion  for  gay  colours  and  rare  jewelry. 
This  taste  was  doubtless  a  survival  of  the 
Phoenician  influences,  as  was  the  musical  love 
of  the  people.  In  the  earliest  annals  of  England 
before  it  was  England,  we  find  that  every  earl  — 
called  "free  necked  man"  and  "weapon  man" 
— had  in  his  retinue  a  number  of  gleemen 
and  minstrels  who  played  the  crwth  and  sang 
him  songs  of  battle  and  lyric  recitals  of  the 
lives  and  braveries  of  dead  heroes,  kings,  and 
demigods.  These  chanted  narratives  were  called 
hero  songs  and  made  up  much  of  the  lyric 
music  of  the  time.      Here  is   a   song  made  by 

[102] 


<K^  The  Dark  Days  <:®> 

some  king  just  before  death  and  well  loved  by 
his  countrymen : 

"  I  have  this  folk  ruled  these  fifty  winters  ; 
Lives  there  no  folk-king  of  kings  about  me 
Not  any  one  of  them 

Dare  in  the  war-strife  welcome  my  onset ; 
Time 's  change  and  chances  I  have  abided, 
Held  mine  own  fairly, 
Sought  not  to  snare  men  ; 
Oath  never  swore  I  falsely  against  right. 
So  for  all  this  may  I  glad  be  at  heart  now. 
Sick  though  I  sit  here. 
Wounded  with  the  death-wound." 

The  gleemen  were  only  servants,  of  course,  ever 
liable  to  be  flogged  to  death  or  burned  for  trifling 
offenses,  like  the  regular  slaves  of  the  time. 
They  were  classed  with  buffoons  and  other  game- 
sters, and  had  no  merit  from  their  trade.  But 
as  a  matter  of  fact  their  field  was  rather  an  exten- 
sive one,  and  their  position  infinitely  preferable 
to  that  of  the  musicians  of  the  gods  in  Egypt 
or  the  unfortunate  senators  and  patricians  who 
learned  to  play  the  fidicula  and  lute  in  Rome. 
They  had  a  certain  independence  of  action,  born 
of  the  very  freedom  and  wildness  of  the  times, 
and  they  were  privileged  to  minister  to  human 
passions  and  impulses,  to  love  and  hate  and  desire 
for  war — not  merely  to  please  the  gods,  gratify 
voluptuous  senses,  or  flatter  vanity. 

[io3] 


«^  The  Heart  of  Music  <K> 

Some  of  their  poetry  was  fine  in  character,  for 
instance  the  hne  in  one  of  the  gleeman's  songs, 
"The  rush  of  the  host,  and  the  crash  of  the 
battle  hne,"  and  such  phrases,  descriptive  of  a 
ship  at  sea,  as  "the  wave  floater,"  "the  foam- 
necked,"  and  "  the  bird  on  the  swan  road  of  the 
sea."  And  from  the  very  ancient  chronicles  we 
imagine  that  the  music  of  the  crwth  which 
accompanied  all  their  songs  was  no  less  fine  in 
quality  and  stirring  in  effect.  As  has  been  said, 
the  Celtic  name  for  the  gleeman  was  Scop,  and 
so  the  minstrels  were  called  until  a  late  day.  In 
g/io  A.D.  they  were  still  known  as  Scops,  and  still 
played  the  crwth.  It,  by  the  by,  bore  many  names 
besides  crwth  and  chrotta.  It  was  also  known  as 
crowd,  rotta,  and  rota  in  Britain.  In  France, 
where  it  travelled  later  on,  it  was  called  the  rote 
and  crout.  The  Teutons  knew  it  as  rotte,  and  the 
Irish  had  two  names  for  it, — cruit  and  clarseach. 

The  first  specific  mention  of  it  which  we  have 
is  in  the  Bishop  of  Poitiers'  legacies,  which  were 
written  in  609.  How  old  it  was  then  it  would 
be  difficult  to  estimate,  but  it  could  hardly  have 
been  of  very  recent  adoption  by  the  Britons  to  be 
already  associated  with  them  by  song  and  repu- 
tation as  strongly  as  was  the  lyre  with  the 
Romans  and  the  harp  with  the  barbarians.      The 

[io4] 


®  >>  The  Dark  Days  <»> 

earliest  pictures  show  it  to  be  a  "  crwth  trittant," 
or  lyre  with  three  strings,  but  later  it  grew  into 
possession  of  six. 

It  was  first  played  like  all  lyres,  resting  on 
the  left  shoulder  and  plucked  with  both  hands. 
In  this  form  it  was  very  primitive  indeed,  with- 
out stops  or  other  method  of  tuning.  When 
the  holes  for  stopping  were  added,  a  slender 
piece  of  wood  was  introduced  into  the  centre  of 
the  instrument,  just  back  of  the  strings,  forming 
a  keyboard.  The  strings,  which  had  been  dis- 
persed over  the  square  frame,  were  drawn  closer 
together.  First  this  was  done  only  at  one  end, 
leaving  the  strings  stretched  in  the  shape  of  a  fan. 
Then  both  were  brought  into  balance,  and  the 
frame  was  changed  to  suit  the  new  requirements 
of  convenience  and  resonance.  The  instrument, 
instead  of  being  square,  had  become  oblong.  It 
now  had  stops,  a  sound-board,  and  six  strings. 
Four  of  these  ran  over  the  finger-board,  the  two 
others  lay  closer  to  the  wood.  When  the  instru- 
ment was  played  by  the  hand,  or  possibly  the 
plectrum,  this  arrangement  of  strings  fitted  easily 
into  the  hand,  the  thumb  manipulating  the  two 
lower  strings. 

When  in  the  seventh  century  the  bow  was  ap- 
plied to  it,  thus  creating  the  first  bow  instrument 

[io5] 


Oi»C^  The  Heart  of  Music  ®» 

of  Europe,  the  four  strings  stretched  over  the 
finger-board  were  used  to  sustain  the  melody,  the 
two  side-strings  being  plucked  in  staccato  accom- 
paniment to  the  music  made  by  the  bow.  The 
bow  was  strung  with  a  cord  or  string  probably  at 
first,  for  it  was  hardly  before  the  thirteenth  century 
that  horsehair  was  used  for  stringing  the  bow. 

How,  when,  or  why  the  bow  was  invented  will 
always  remain  a  mystery.  It  is  strange  that  in  all 
the  misty  labyrinth  of  musical  history  nothing  is 
more  elusive  than  this  small  detail  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  queen  of  instruments,  the  Heart  of 
Music.  Many  persons  deny  that  the  evolution  of 
the  crwth  had  anything  at  all  to  do  with  the  prog- 
ress of  the  violin.  These  persons  insist  that  the 
violin  grew  in  Stats  and  that  its  ancestry  was  all 
Oriental,  and  that  its  phases  of  embryotic  evolution 
ran  through  wandering  minstrels  straying  into 
Southern  Europe  in  the  days  of  the  First  Crusade. 

In  any  case  we  must  leave  the  crwth  in 
Britain  and  travel  across  the  blue  water  to  see 
what  is  developing  in  connection  with  this  last 
theory.  Is  it  possible  that  already  we  hear  the 
Heart  of  Music  beat  to  a  swifter,  surer  measure, 
knoAving  that  the  time  grows  short  and  shorter 
before  its  gracious  fulfilment  to  itself? 

[106] 


I 


IVith.  d^ebeck  Sf  %/ 


"  Some  of  them  were  playing  Harps,  others  Mowing  Bagpipes,  others 
twanging  Lutes,  others  playing  Pipe  and  Lute  together,  others  tuning 
up  their  Rebecks.  And  Sets  of  Bells  were  ringing,  and  Trumpets  bray- 
ing, and  Drums  roaring.  There  were  Symphonies,  Psalteries,  Shawlms, 
Monochords,  all  playing  at  once.  There  were  Gitterns,  Regals,  Viols, 
Cymbals,  Tabors,  Dulcimers,  Flageolets,  Nabelles,  Emmoraches,  Mica- 
mons,  Naquaires,  Douceines,  Mouscordes,  —  all  these  were  the  Minstrels 
playing.  And  some  were  telling  stories,  and  others  were  making 
verses."  —  From  Old  Latin  poem,  by  Americus  de  Pergrato. 


VIII.— With  Rebeck  and  Viol 


In  the  eighth  century  bands  of  gypsy  players 
began  to  appear  throughout  Europe, — singers 
and  musicians  from  the  East  with  lyres  and  lutes 
of  Assyrian  and  Persian  make.  They  mingled 
with  the  survivals  of  the  Roman  lyric  craft  and 
created  a  new  class, — the  class  of  jongleurs  or 
minstrels.  Anathematized  by  the  Church,  they 
nevertheless  led  merry  lives  enough  in  spite  of 
many  hardships.  Their  music  was  quickly  seized 
upon  by  the  impressionable  Latin  populace,  though 
the  smallness  of  their  number  and  the  absence  of 
influential  favour  prevented  them  from  taking  any 
really  very  definite  place  in  the  musical  history 
of  the  time. 

The  feudal  system  was  the  only  protection  for 
minstrels,  as  it  was  for  most  lowly  folk.  Those 
of  them  who  were  very  fortunate  were  engaged 
by  barons  and  lords  and  kept  in  their  castles  for 
the  amusement  of  the  family  and  possible  guests. 
A  chronicler  of  remote  time  enumerates  the  house- 
hold of  a  typical  feudal  lord  as  including  ' '  the 
feudal  family,  the  chaplain,  the  leech,  the  visit- 
ing strangers   of  rank,   the   servants   of  varying 

[109] 


®»  The  Heart  of  Music  C<® 

degrees,  the  bards,  the  minstrels,  and  the  other 
play-folk.  " 

John  Lord,  the  historian,  insists  that  the  feudal 
system  was  not  at  all  the  lamentable  institution 
that  persons  have  considered  it ;  that  it  had  many 
fine  points  as  a  balancing,  equalising  factor,  a  de- 
termining force  in  the  relative  values  of  men 
and  of  conditions,  and  a  natural  expression,  as  it 
w^as  a  fitting  fulfilment,  of  the  peculiar  needs  of 
the  day. 

Its  bearing  upon  our  present  subject  lies  in  the 
fact  that  it  protected  and  encouraged  a  certain 
form  of  spontaneous  lyric  song  which  otherwise 
might  have  died  or  become  hopelessly  corrupted 
and  prevented  the  longer  popular  usage.  From 
the  beginning  of  the  feudal  system,  in  the  year 
800,  until  the  First  Crusade  in  logS,  music  was 
divided  into  two  forms:  the  church  form,  w^hich 
w^as  almost  purely  vocal  and  strictly  Gregorian, 
and  the  light,  secular  form,  which  consisted  of 
the  most  trivial  of  popular  songs  and  ballads  that 
had  been  sung  by  strolling  minstrels  since  the 
fall  of  the  Roman  empire.  Between  these  two 
extremes  of  tonal  expression  existed  nothing,  for 
it  was  an  age  of  contrasts. 

Justin  Smith  says  :  ' '  Appalling  crimes  could 
ride  side  by  side  with  amazing  virtues,  and  com- 

[no] 


«>  With  Rebeck  and  Viol  «© 

plete  self-renunciation  follow  close  on  the  heels 
of  unmeasured  self-indulgence.  The  watch-night 
for  the  dead  was  given  up  to  laughter  and  orgies. 
Wild  songs  and  pious  hymns  were  sung  at 
Christmas  to  the  same  airs, — the  hymns  so 
heavenly  that  it  seemed  as  if  the  sky  must  open, 
the  songs  often  so  indecent  that,  according  to 
Gascoigne,  a  certain  worthy  man  died  of  morti- 
fication because  he  could  not  forget  them !  " 

Then  came  the  Crusades  in  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury, and  a  mighty  step  was  taken  in  the  history 
of  stringed  music.  According  to  the  best  his- 
torical authorities  the  Crusaders  were  worse  than 
the  people  upon  whom  they  waged  their  unrelent- 
ing war.  They  not  only  burned,  and  sacked,  and 
massacred,  and  looted  more  barbarously  than  the 
Saracens ;  they  acquired  all  the  looseness  and 
vice  of  the  East  and  improved  on  them,  accru- 
ing to  themselves  all  the  worst  and  little  of  the 
best  of  the  futile  Oriental  spirit.  It  is  said  that 
they  danced  to  the  sound  of  Arabian  instruments 
and  made  love  to  singing-girls  under  the  very 
walls,  doom-freighted  and  terrible,  of  tragic  Acre. 

When  they  returned  they  were  not  only  de- 
moralised, but  demoralising.  They  brought  great 
armies  of  strolling  players  and  musicians  in  their 
train.      So,   in  spite  of  their  many  sins  against 

[m] 


<^>  The  Heart  of  Music  C^ 

justice  and  purity  of  heart,  we  owe  them  a 
colossal  debt,  —  the  bow  instrument.  For  it  is 
fair  to  assume  that  the  greater  number  of  these 
new  forms  of  stringed  instruments  reached  us  in 
this  fashion  —  ignobly,  with  the  light,  loose  folk 
who  followed  the  Knights  Templars  and  the 
crusading  warriors  back  to  Europe. 

Thus,  with  the  Crusaders  came  a  new  fire  and 
melody  into  the  violent  and  dark  world  of  the 
eleventh  century.  The  music  of  the  East,  pas- 
sionate, spirited,  and  infinitely  appealing,  the 
music  which  already  had  slipped  into  Europe  in 
shy,  secret  fashions,  poured  flood-like  through 
Christendom  on  the  heels  of  the  returning  Knights, 
bearing  memories  of  august,  burned-out  faiths, 
and  a  thousand  poignant  racial  challenges.  The 
open  road  beaten  by  the  crusading  armies  between 
the  East  and  West  was  the  open  road  for  the  bow 
instrument's  entrance  into  European  civilisation. 
As  Rowbotham  says  :  ' '  The  love  of  Arabian  min- 
strelsy, the  traditions  of  Arabian  music,  were  thus 
enabled  to  pass  in  a  steady  stream  into  a  land 
eminently  calculated  to  give  them  welcome." 

The  full  value  of  this  can  only  be  appreciated 
by  the  music  lover  when  he  realises  that  there 
were  already  in  Arabia  and  the  neighbouring  East- 
ern countries  twenty-nine  kinds   of  stringed 

[112] 


^.0.» 


With  Rebeck  and  Viol  C®> 


instruments,  fourteen  of  them  being  bow  instru- 
ments of  the  vioHn  form.  These  instruments, 
of  course,  had  grown  into  being  from  the  revanas- 
tron,  and  were  of  varying  degrees  of  finish  and 
tone. 

The  two  best  known  to  musical  historians  are 
the  rehab  and  the  kemengeh.  Both  of  these 
instruments  were  played  with  one  end  supported 
by  a  slender  rest  upon  the  ground,  both  were 
played  with  a  bow,  and  both  started  with  one 
string  only.  The  rehab  is  the  more  perfect  of 
the  two,  having  a  larger  or  more  resonant  body, 
a  shorter  neck,  and  a  shape  better  adapted  gen- 
erally to  the  best  tonal  effect. 

The  Moorish  invasion  of  Spain  brought  all  man- 
ner of  new  elements  into  the  Occidental  world. 
Although  we  are  told  by  certain  authorities  that 
the  Moors  had  no  lasting  influence  upon  Spanish 
music,  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  the  occu- 
pation of  the  Orientals  did  not  carry  with  it  some 
very  definite  traces  of  the  art  which  was  the  very 
breath  of  life  to  the  people  of  the  East. 

Now  when  the  rebeck  came  into  Spain  it 
passed  by  Italy  —  some  day  to  be  the  cradle  as 
the  coronation-throne  of  the  Heart  of  Music.  It 
had  already  led  a  truly  precarious  existence  in 
Southern  France  and  the  Basque  country  for  many 

[ii3] 


«•>:>  The  Heart  of  Music  «> 

years,  but  the  full  flood-tide  of  its  power  did  not 
reach  Spain  until  the  twelfth  century. 

It  was  in  the  thirteenth  century  that  the  Church 
in  Spain,  becoming  scandalised  at  the  dissolute 
hands  and  unseemly  uses  into  which  the  rebeck 
and  its  brethren  had  fallen,  forbade  it  to  be  played 
or  listened  to  by  any  good  Catholics.  It  was  here- 
after to  be  reserved  for  the  holy  rites  of  the  Church 
itself.  Perhaps  they  hoped  to  purify  its  mission 
through  the  atmosphere  of  devotion,  or  perhaps 
they  burned  to  develop  its  possibilities  in  peace 
and  quiet,  undisturbed  and  unprofaned  by  secular 
interference,  or  perhaps  they  merely  wanted  the 
best  of  this  world,  whether  food  or  learning,  wine 
or  culture,  music  or  amusement,  for  themselves. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  the  rebeck  and  its  fellows  passed 
out  of  the  hands  of  the  common  folk  and  for  a 
brief  space  lived  a  virtuous  life  in  the  cloister. 

But  the  people  were  not  to  be  so  easily  cheated 
of  their  merry  stringed  music  ;  they  loved  it  far 
too  well  to  relinquish  it  without  a  struggle. 
Since  the  Church  would  not  permit  them  to  play 
a  rebeck  they  cast  about  in  their  minds  for  a 
method  to  circumvent  the  Church  and  to  agree 
to  its  dictum  while  doing  what  they  pleased. 

The  essential  peculiarity  of  the  rebeck  con- 
sisted in  the  fact  that  it  was  played  with  a  bow. 

[ii/i] 


<^>  With  Rebeck  and  Viol  <>;> 

Remove  the  bow  and  your  rebeck  was  not  a 
rebeck.  This  simphfied  the  problem  of  the 
populace  that  happened  to  be  bent  on  gay  stringed 
music.  The  bow  was  abandoned,  and  the  rebeck, 
shorn  of  its  distinguishing  factor,  became  a  rebeck 
no  longer.  Its  shape  became  slightly,  very 
slightly  altered,  and  in  its  new  form  it  was  known 
as  a  mandolin,  mandolina,  or  mandola, — a  sort 
of  modified  lute  dearly  beloved  by  the  Spanish 
people.  In  its  larger  form  it  was  the  guitar 
which  has  endured  to  this  day. 

It  was  in  this  form  that  it  travelled  back  to 
Italy,  — once  passed  in  its  hasty  journey,  — and 
before  its  wonderful  upward  flight  to  perfection. 

When  the  rebeck  became  a  mandolin  and 
guitar,  and  journeyed  into  Provence  to  be  given  a 
bow  again,  and  was  rechristened  the  guitar  fiddle, 
just  such  another  contradictory  evolution  took 
place  as  we  have  seen  in  the  fortunes  of  the  crwth. 
That  instrument,  we  may  remember,  evoluted 
backward  and  became  a  lyre  after  it  had  been 
a  "bulging  box,"  and  then  turned  all  the  way 
around  and  became  a  bulging  box  again,  after 
all.  This  eccentric  way  of  doing  things,  however, 
seems  to  have  been  confined  to  the  instruments  of 
Spain.  For  the  French  bow  instruments  never 
went  into  disuse,  and  they  went  on  no  pilgrim- 

[ii5] 


<^>  The  Heart  of  Music  <js> 

age  either.  Even  the  crwth  had  forgotten  its 
wild  ways,  and  now,  most  utterly  meek,  sober, 
and  unpretending,  awaited  its  turn  in  the  dance 
of  strings. 

There  is  yet  another  stringed  instrument  of 
mediaeval  days  which  we  must  consider  as  a 
possible  evangel  of  the  violin,  if  not  an  actual 
ancestor.  This  is  the  curious  and  unique  instru- 
ment known  as  the  tromba  marina,  marine  trum- 
pet, trumscheidt,  tympanischiza,and  nonnen-geige 
(nuns'  violin).  It  came  from  Germany  origi- 
nally, where  it  was  immensely  popular,  especially 
among  the  nuns  of  various  convents,  notably 
those  of  Marienstern,  near  Camenz,  and  Marien- 
thal,  near  Ostritz.  Both  of  them  were  situated 
in  Saxony,  proverbial  for  its  music-loving  folk. 
The  nuns  of  these  cloisters  still  use  the  marine 
trumpet,  making  it  a  striking  feature  in  the  initi- 
ation ceremonies  of  each  novice  who  comes  to 
take  the  veil.  They  usually  play  them  in  quartet 
form,  as  the  greater  number  of  the  instruments 
have  but  one  string ;  one  plays  the  melody,  the 
other  three  tones  forming  the  harmonies.  Some 
of  the  old  marine  trumpets  had  several  strings, 
and  very  good  bridges.  More  than  one  authority 
insists  that  it  was  one  of  the  earliest  of  all  bow 
instruments  ;   it  certainly  fathered  the   geige,  or 

[ii6] 


<:®>  With  Rebeck  and  Viol  <» 

German  violin,  and  probably,  together  with  the 
lute,  inspired  the  first  violin  makers  to  the  prog- 
ress and  consummation  of  their  craft. 

So  vv^e  see  that  in  all  parts  of  the  European 
world  the  violin  was  growing  to  completion  :  in 
England  and  France  they  had  the  crwth,  rebeck, 
and  viol,  as  well  as  other  more  primitive  in- 
struments ;  in  Spain  the  mandolin  and  guitar, 
later  developed  into  the  guitar  fiddle  beloved  by 
the  troubadours,  and  in  Germany  the  marine 
trumpet  and  lute.  It  is  a  question  which  of  these 
instruments  progressed  most  rapidly,  but  the 
writer  is  inclined  to  believe  that  this  distinction 
belongs  to  the  British  crwth,  though  it  was  in 
Provence  that  the  big  "troubadours'  fiddle"  was 
first  used. 

Strangely  enough  it  is  in  that  curiously  inde- 
pendent little  instrument,  the  crwth,  that  we  first 
find  most  of  the  distinguishing  changes  and 
developments  in  violin  growth.  The  bow,  to 
begin  with,  was  applied  to  the  crwth,  as  we  have 
seen,  before  any  other  European  instrument.  Of 
characteristic  and  advanced  fiddle  appendages 
there- remain  the  bridge,  the  sound  post,  the 
sound  holes,  the  bass  bar,  the  curved-in-waist, 
and  the  corner-blocks.  Some  of  these  were  more 
or  less  established  before  the  era  of  the  crwth, 


<)<*  The  Heart  of  Music  «® 

and  none  of  them  were  perfected  until  much 
later,  but  we  find  in  this  Northern  instrument 
a  surprising  progress  in  distinctive  features,  a 
progress  and  improvement  beyond  that  of  the 
contemporaneous  instruments  of  the  South. 

The  ribible,  fidel,  and  hurdy-gurdy  are  all 
English  branches  of  the  primitive  fiddle.  They 
are  spoken  of  constantly  in  old  poems  and  chroni- 
cles, as,  too,  are  the  videls  of  Germany.  The 
Nibelungenlied  refers  to  the  twenty-four  videlars 
of  Etzel,  richly  dressed  and  starting  on  a  message 
of  importance  to  Burgundy.  They  brought  back 
with  them,  it  may  be  remembered,  the  famous 
fiddler  Volker,  "who,"  says  the  old  historian, 
' '  could  do  as  much  with  his  fiddle  as  another 
man  with  the  broadsword." 

Chaucer  speaks  of  Absolon,  who  *'  could  play 
tunes  on  a  small  ribible,"  and  wrote  of  the  Oxford 
Clerk : 

"  For  him  had  lever  have  at  his  heddes  hed 
A  twenty  bokes  clothed  in  black  and  red, 
Of  Aristotle  and  his  philosophy 
Than  robes  rich,  or  Fidel,  or  Sautrie." 

The  literature  of  England  is  especially  rich  in 
reference  to  the  fiddle, — the  rebeck,  rebible,  or 
rowhyhle,  as  it  is  called  in  Old  English. 

Many  of  us  know  the  gay  young  clergyman  of 
Edward  lis  time,  who  did  "...  Ratyl  on  the 

[,i8] 


<®>  With  Rebeck  and  Viol  «}© 

rowbyble,  and  in  none  other  bookesi"  And 
while  we  are  on  the  subject  of  gaj  young  clergy- 
men, Bourdelot  tells  a  story  of  a  young  priest 
of  his  acquaintance  who  was  late  to  his  Good 
Friday  service.  When  two  friends  went  in  search 
of  him  they  found  him  dancing  about  his  room, 
and  at  the  same  time  playing  most  infectious 
melodies  upon  his  violin.  He  explained  that  he 
always  did  this  before  a  service,  as  it  cheered 
and  strengthened  him  "for  what,"  in  his  own 
words,  "  would  otherwise  be  a  work  of  pain  and 
labour." 

The  term  "fiddling  parson"  was  for  many 
years  one  of  the  bitterest  opprobrium,  probably 
because  of  the  deserved  ill-repute  into  which  the 
viol  fell  during  one  long  period  in  its  career.  In 
55/i  Ghildebert  was  obliged  to  institute  legal 
measures,  in  France,  for  the  suppression  of  the 
evil  uses  to  which  music  was  put,  and  although 
matters  were  a  trifle  better  in  England,  the  Middle 
Ages  did  not  add  to  the  lustre  of  the  fair  fame  of 
stringed  instruments. 

Public  opinion  was  affected,  also,  by  the  luck- 
less fate  of  a  certain  parson  who  was  fiddling  to 
his  parishioners  on  the  village  green.  The 
weather  was  clear  and  the  villagers  were  dancing. 
Out  of  the  blue  sky  came  a  flash  of  lightning  and 

[•■9] 


<C^  The  Heart  of  Music  Or> 

killed  that  "fiddling  parson"  where  he  stood, 
—  and  smashed  his  fiddle,   too. 

The  art  of  muslc-niaking  was  still  confined  to 
the  two  opposing  classes, — the  monks  and  the 
wandering  players.  It  had  not  yet  been  taken 
up  by  the  knight  troubadours  and  made  the 
mediaeval  fashion.  That  movement  was  the  out- 
come of  the  Spanish  stricture  against  bow  instru- 
ments, —  a  stricture  which  sent  music-loving 
knights  and  lords  into  the  Basque  country  and 
Provence,  preferring  exile  and  a  precarious  liveli- 
hood to  safe  housekeeping  without  the  viols  that 
they  loved. 

These  men  were  the  later,  higher  development 
of  the  jongleurs,  who  had  for  so  long  controlled 
all  secular  music.  These  jongleurs,  whose  name 
was  a  mere  variant  of  joglars  or  jugglers,  com- 
posed the  theatrical  profession  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  They  were  the  teachers  of  such  young 
daughters  of  feudal  lords  as  might  chance  to  be 
lyrically  ambitious.  They  amused  the  priests 
and  the  guests  of  these  same  feudal  lords,  and 
helped  to  pass  dull  evenings  for  the  inmates  of 
isolated  castles.  They  were  the  joy  of  the  vil- 
lagers of  the  market  place,  where  they  combined 
music  with  contortionists'  feats,  dancing,  and 
story-telling. 

[120] 


OOs*  With  Rebeck  and  Viol  «» 

Says  one  amazed  looker  on  of  a  clever  jongleur : 
*'  He  folds  himself,  and  unfolds  himself,  and  in 
unfolding  himself  he  folds  himself!  " 

They  sang  narratives,  wrestled,  tumbled, 
jumped  through  hoops,  begged,  fiddled,  tossed 
knives,  exhibited  animals,  and  even  acted  as 
messengers  in  intrigues  and  advertisers  of 
strange  nostrums.  Every  jongleur  was  expected 
to  play  at  least  nine  instruments,  as  well  as  to 
know  every  trick,  joke,  and  device  for  amusing  a 
captious  audience. 

"Learn,  my  good  Jongleurs,"  advises  Girard 
Calanson,  the  troubadour,  "to  act  well,  to 
speak  well,  and  to  extemporise  rhymes  well. 
Learn  how  to  string  the  Viol  with  seventeen 
chords,  to  sound  the  Bells,  and  to  compose  a 
Jig  that  shall  enliven  the  sound  of  the  Psaltery. 
A  Jongleur  ought  to  prepare  nine  instruments 
of  ten  chords,  and  if  he  learns  to  play  well 
on  them  they  will  furnish  him  with  ample 
melody." 

The  doctors  or  wise  men  of  mediaeval  times 
retained  a  truly  Chaldean  belief  in  music  as  a 
medicinal  or  curative  factor.  They  also  con- 
sidered it  possessed  of  magical  or  supernatural 
qualities,  —  again  like  the  Chaldeans,  —  and  em- 
ployed   it   in    all    sorts    of    curious    ways ,  —  to 


<;<;^  The  Heart  of  Music  ®» 

exorcise  demons,  cure  insanity,  charm  animals, 
and  a  variety  of  other  strange  uses. 

' '  The  aspic  is  the  serpent  that  guards  the 
balsam,"  wrote  Armand  de  \illeneuve.  the 
learned  doctor.  "When  a  man  wishes  to  gather 
balsam,  he  puts  the  aspic  to  sleep  with  the  music 
of  stringed  instruments,  and  thus  secures  the 
balsam  ;  and  when  the  aspic  sees  how  it  has  been 
tricked,  it  stops  one  ear  with  its  tail,  and  rubs 
the  other  on  the  ground,  till  it  also  is  stopped. 
Then  it  cannot  hear  the  music  any  more,  and  so 
it  keeps  watch." 

More  picturesque  even  than  the  jongleurs  were 
the  jongleuses,  or  gleemaidens,  the  girl  minstrels 
who  travelled  about  alone  or  with  companies  of 
players,  and  sang  their  songs  to  the  accompani- 
ment of  crwth,  rebeck,  or  viol,  and  danced  to 
the  measure  of  their  own  music.  Some  of  these 
gleemaidens  took  dancing  bears  about  with  them. 
The  animals  were  trained  to  stand  upon  their 
hind  legs  and  dance  as  soon  as  the  first  bars  of 
music  were  played.  "The  bears  would  dance 
with  the  gleemaidens,"  says  one  old  book,  "who 
sang  the  song  of  the  dance  with  most  melodious 
voices  ;  and  the  bears  would  dance  with  them, 
putting  their  great  paws  in  their  pretty  hands, 
and    footing    step    by    step    quite    correctly    the 

[122] 


«^  With  Rebeck  and  Viol  «^ 

measure  of  the  dance,  growhng  contentedly  the 
while." 

Adeline  was  the  name  of  one  of  the  more 
famous  of  the  young  gleemaidens  in  the  eleventh 
century.  She  received  an  estate  from  William 
the  Conqueror  for  her  musical  skill.  Melior  was 
another,  and  a  third  was  Josiane,  who  sang 
before  St.  Bevis  of  Southampton.  Marie  de 
France,  the  lyrical  Bretonne,  was  the  jongleuse 
of  William  Longsword,  son  of  Henry  II  and  Fair 
Rosamond. 

The  jongleurs  were  outlaws,  with  neither 
franchise,  privilege  of  legal  protection,  nor  right 
of  redress.  If  a  man  insulted  a  minstrel,  the 
latter  could  not  resent  it ;  no  reputable  citizen 
would  enter  into  a  quarrel  with  him,  and  the  poor 
musician  could  only  claim  satisfaction  by  strik- 
ing at  the  offender  s  shadow  !  If  a  man  murdered 
a  jongleur  there  was  no  legal  penalty.  Says 
Rowbotham  :  "  The  murder  was  not  of  a  man, 
but  of  a  minstrel,  —  a  being  beyond  the  pale 
of  any  law." 

To  protect  each  other,  since  the  law  refused  them 
its  ofEces,  the  musicians  of  England  formed  a 
guild  or  union,  and  met,  four  and  five  hundred 
strong,  at  various  appointed  meeting-places, — 
sometimes  at  Chester,  sometimes  York,  sometimes 

[123] 


«X>  The  Heart  of  Music  <iC^ 

Beverley,  Canterbury,  or  Button.  John  of  Gaunt, 
the  Duke  of  Lancaster,  gave  the  EngKsh  minstrels 
a  charter  granting  them  the  right  to  appoint  a 
minstrel  king,  who  should  have  full  control  over 
them,  in  lieu  of  the  ordinary  legal  restrictions 
and  protection.  In  the  fourteenth  century  we 
find  Richard  II  giving  John  Caroney  the  musi- 
cian a  passport  in  which  the  bearer  is  described 
as  "  Rex  Ministrallorum  Nostrorum  (The  King 
of  our  Minstrels)."  Walter  Haliday,  another 
music  maker,  was  so  far  recognised  as  to  be 
awarded  by  the  Crown  eighteen  marks  (about 
five  dollars)  a  year  for  his  skill !  This  munifi- 
cent generosity  was  sufficiently  rare  to  be  re- 
corded in  more  than  one  chronicle  ;  and  as  a 
matter  of  fact  the  singers  of  songs  and  players  of 
viols  received  but  little  recognition  or  encourage- 
ment in  those  days  from  the  powers  that  were. 

It  was  from  these  men,  despised,  outlawed, 
unprotected,  and  unprivileged,  that  the  violin  came 
to  us  at  last.  From  the  beginning  of  time,  as  we 
have  seen,  music  was  unhonoured  ;  the  place  of 
musicians  was  with  the  buffoons,  the  dogs,  not 
even  with  the  servants,  so  low  was  their  estate. 
We  know  this  was  true  in  Egypt  and  the  other 
ancient  nations  ;  Ave  find  the  conditions  unchanged 
in    mediaeval    France   and    England,    Spain    and 

[iM] 


<}^>  With  Rebeck  and  Viol  «® 

Germany.  So  these  jongleurs,  minstrels,  glee- 
men,  menestriers  —  what  you  will  —  lived  in  a 
world  apart,  a  world  wherein  only  their  comrades 
and  their  instruments  were  to  be  found,  and  from 
which  the  outer,  colder,  mocking  earth  folk  were 
safely  shut. 

There  is  an  old  song  which  seems  to  bring 
them  before  us,  the  merry,  pitiful  glee  folk,  and 
naively  to  enter  a  plea  for  them  in  their  lives  of 
weary  jollity : 

♦*  Ye  Joglars  In  ye  Markette  Playce, 
They  quippe  and  trippe  with  ympishe  grayce ; 
They  playe  ye  Rebecke  and  ye  Viol, 
And  feare  nor  Singing  Bout  nor  Trial; 
They  laugh,  and  sing,  and  dance  a-payce. 
Ye  Joglars  in  ye  Markette  Playce. 

**  Yet  times  I  ask  me  if  the  Rayce 
Of  hurried  Life  weigh  not  a  spayce. 
Ye  Laughter  and  ye  Song  grow  sadde. 
Ye  Hearte  be  drear  that  once  was  gladde. 
Pitye,  deare  Saintes,  their  weary  Cayse, 
Ye  Joglars  in  ye  Markette  Playce!  " 


[125] 


oke   Ozoubadouz  'd  cfiddle 


Spring  and  the  nightingales  in  chorus  singing, 

And  all  the  blue  violets  that  wake  in  May, 
Sweet  invitation  to  my  soul  are  bringing 

That  I  sing  with  them  their  soft  song  to-day. 
One  lay  I  know,  among  all  songs  and  psalms, 

God,  ere  for  yon  burning  East  I  depart. 
Grant  that  I  may  once  hold  her  within  my  arms. 

Who  in  her  breast  keeps  my  heart. 

Most  sweet  is  she,  yet  hath  she  strange  powers 
For  dealing  hurt  direr  than  wounds  in  war. 

Her  face  of  sunshine,  and  her  lips  of  flowers. 
Her  eyes  of  heaven,  and  her  smile  of  stars. 

These  be  the  darts  by  which  she  took  me  slave, 
Wounded  am  I,  and  have  no  strength  to  rise  : 

Happier  I  with  this  wound  that  she  gave 
Than  healed  by  another's  eyes. 

Translation  of  song  by  French 

troubadour  of  the  Middle  Ages. 


IX. — The  Troubadours  Fiddle 


1 1  rpi 

JL  HE  troubadour's  fiddle  "  is  rather  a  mova- 
ble quantity.  Some  persons  declare  it  is  derived 
from  the  trumscheidt,  others  from  the  Spanish 
guitar  (the  bowless  rebeck),  and  others  from  the 
crwth ;  probably  it  ow^es  its  parentage  to  a  blend 
of  all  three  as  well  as  sundry  side-stocks  of  foreign, 
mayhap  Oriental,  blood.  Without  doubt  the 
"troubadour's  fiddle,"  whatever  it  was,  was  the 
direct  predecessor  of  the  violin.  The  troubadours 
created  musical  taste  among  the  well-born  and 
rich  classes,  and  with  the  growth  and  spread 
of  their  art  and  its  popularity,  the  demands 
of  the  public  reached  out  even  farther  and 
higher  toward  a  perfect  instrument  to  be  a  fit 
medium  and  interpreter  for  the  new  and  lovely 
craft.  It  seems  clear,  as  has  been  stated  here 
before,  that  the  crwth  leaped  ahead  more 
swiftly  and  surely  than  any  other  instrument 
in  that  day  of  changes,  developments,  and 
achievements. 

In  the  course  of  time  the  knights  and  lords  of 
Southern  Europe  adopted  the  lyric  art  as  their 
own  and  learned  to  play  on  the  lute  and  rebeck 

[129] 


«>:>   The  Heart  of  Music  «^ 

(sometimes  called  viol  even  then  1 )  and  to  sing 
soft  songs  to  the  fair  ladies  of  their  choice. 

The  bridge,  of  course,  in  primitive  forms  had 
existed  since  the  days  of  early  Greeks  and  doubt- 
less had  come  to  them  from  the  East.  But  the 
bridge  which  the  English  gleemen  placed  upon 
the  crwth  is  said  by  most  authorities  to  have  been 
a  singularly  good  one.  Moreover  it  was  in  the 
crwth  that  those  two  important  and  essential 
things,  the  sound-post  and  the  bass  bar,  were  first 
introduced.  The  latter  appeared  first.  It  was 
found  as  the  belly  of  the  crwth  was  made  of 
thinner  and  finer  wood,  and  the  tension  of  the 
strings  increased  to  meet  the  new  demands  for 
resonance,  that  the  weight  of  the  strings,  tuned 
as  tightly  as  they  were,  tended  to  bend  and  even 
to  crush  the  belly  of  the  instrument.  So  a  strip 
of  wood  w^as  inserted  just  under  the  C  string, 
a  long  and  narroAV  bar  w^hich  acted  as  a  sup- 
port and  strengthener  to  the  Avhole  fiddle  front. 
This  led  to  the  introduction  of  the  sound-post, 
v>hich  the  French  call  "lame"  or  "soul,"  and 
the  Germans  "  stimme"  or  "  voice,"  of  the  violin. 
The  bass  bar  supported  one  side  of  the  instru- 
ment only,  the  sound-post  was  put  in  to  strengthen 
the  other  side.  The  right  leg  of  the  bridge  was 
simply  elongated  down  through  the  body  of  the 

[i3o] 


®»  The  Troubadours  Fiddle  <®> 

crwth  and  fastened  to  the  back.  It  was  soon 
discovered  that  this  simple  device  for  mechanical 
precaution  had  increased  the  musical  qualities  of 
the  crwth  doubly  and  trebly.  Sound-holes  had 
existed  for  a  long  time  in  all  stringed  instruments, 
but  their  primitive  form  had  been  round  cavities 
just  under  the  strings,  instead  of  curved  slits  to 
admit  air  and  let  out  sound.  Even  this  seems  to 
have  started  not  so  much  with  a  scientific  desire 
to  improve  the  instrument  as  a  fantastic  imagery 
involving  the  change  from  the  hole  shaped  like 
the  full  moon  to  two  shaped  as  crescents. 

The  jongleurs  and  troubadours  had  forced  the 
crwth,  rebeck,  viol,  marine  trumpet,  and  other 
bow  instruments  into  such  popularity  that  im- 
provements upon  the  violin  form  were  inevitable. 
There  grew  a  greater  and  greater  demand  for 
resonance,  and  in  order  to  please  the  public,  the 
fiddle  makers  made  larger,  stronger  instruments, 
until  they  were  nearer  violas  and  violoncellos  than 
violins.  With  the  increasing  size  of  the  instru- 
ment it  became  more  and  more  difficult  to  reach 
the  strings  with  the  bow  without  lifting  the  bridge 
to  an  absurd  distance.  Therefore  some  clever 
fiddle  maker  made  a  waist  for  the  instrument, 
curving  the  body  in  on  either  side,  that  the  bow 
might  be  operated  with  ease  upon  each  or  all  of 

[i3i] 


®»  The  Heart  of  Music  <» 

the  strings  at  will.  The  corner  blocks,  Mr. 
Payne  and  others  are  inclined  to  believe,  came 
from  Germany  and  not  until  the  fifteenth  century. 
They  were  directly  the  outcome  of  a  desire  to 
strengthen  the  instrument  for  the  increasing  strain 
of  tense  strings,  and  probably  were  first  intro- 
duced by  one  of  the  famous  old  lute-making 
families  of  Saxony,  like  the  Tieffenbriickers  or 
their  forerunners. 

The  first  troubadour  who  achieved  any  sort 
of  fame,  or  left  any  illustrious  record  behind 
him,  the  first  swallow  of  the  long  Troubadour's 
Summer,  which  lasted  from  1096  (about  the  time 
of  the  First  Crusade)  to  1294,  was  Guillaume  de 
Poitiers,  ninth  Duke  of  Aquitaine,  born  in  107 1. 
Whether  or  not  he  played  the  viol,  however,  is 
not  known.  He  is  only  described  as  being  skilled 
in  the  lute  and  lyre.  This  too  is  true  of  Regnault 
de  Coucy,  Bernart  deVentadorn,  "Adenesli  Rois," 
Bertrand  de  Born,  and  the  rest  of  the  melody 
makers  of  those  first  dim  days  in  lyric  history. 

When  the  Church's  edict  became  enforced  in 
the  thirteenth  century  in  Spain,  many  of  the 
Spanish  troubadours  travelled  into  France  and 
Italy  and  became  wandering  players.  With  his 
viol  on  his  back  and  a  good  nag  beneath  him ,  the 
troubadour  journeyed  from   town   to  town  and 

[,3.] 


<X>  The  Troubadour's  Fiddle 


®v^> 


castle  to  castle,  jesting,  singing,  and  making  love 
indiscriminately  to  the  innkeeper's  daughter  and 
the  wife  of  the  feudal  lord.  The  two  classes  of 
minstrels  were  very  definitely  divided,  — the  high- 
born troubadour  and  the  ragged  jongleur, — but 
they  were  both  adventurers,  depending  on  their 
musical  skill  and  their  mother  wit  for  their  next 
meal  and  a  night's  lodging.  Their  audacity  was 
their  stock  in  trade,  whether  directed  against 
priest  or  baron,   comrade  or  sweetheart. 

"  My  nag  is  a  better  Christian  than  you,  and  I 
will  prove  it,"  declared  a  merry  jongleur  to  one 
of  the  heretic  sect  of  Albigensians,  the  while 
he  scraped  his  rebeck  diligently  for  the  monk's 
distraction.  "  You  drink  no  wine  ;  neither  does 
he.  You  eat  no  meat;  neither  does  he.  He  does 
not  even  eat  bread.  You  are  badly  lodged  ;  he  is 
worse.  You  deny  the  articles  of  faith;  my  nag, 
on  the  contrary,  though  he  does  not  believe,  does 
not  oppose  the  faith  nor  deny  the  truth  ;  so  you 
see  he  has  the  advantage  of  you  both  as  to  faith 
and  as  to  works  !  "  And  he  ended  with  a 
flourish  of  notes  and  a  wave  of  his  bow. 

Even  such  a  gentle  singer  as  Raimbaut  de 
Vaqueiras  had  to  be  reproved  by  the  lady  of  his 
adoration  with  the  following  quaintly  recorded 
remonstrance:  "Mountebank,  your  effrontery 

[i33] 


«:»  The  Heart  of  Music  <®> 

amazes.  If  you  cannot  get  on  without  my  love, 
you  will  freeze  to  death  this  winter  I  " 

Raimbaut,  by  the  by,  was  one  of  the  first 
"fiddlers  "  of  history.  Although  his  instrument 
was  far  from  being  a  violin,  it  was  a  very  excel- 
lent viol  and  as  dear  to  his  heart  as  the  Stradi- 
varius  instrujnent  is  to  the  master  of  to-day. 
When,  in  his  journey  through  Lombardy,  he 
encountered  bleak  hospitality  at  the  hands  of  that 
notoriously  miserly  people  and,  says  the  story, 
was  forced  to  sleep  in  stable  and  in  huts  with  but 
half  a  roof,  the  driest  corner  was  always  reserved 
for  his  viol.  He  might  catch  cold  with  impunity, 
but  the  rain  would  forever  kill  the  voice  of  his 
beloved  instrument,  —  which  was  not  only  his 
companion,   but  his  bread  winner. 

It  must  have  been  after  some  such  experience 
as  this  that  he  wrote  his  famous  song  beginning 

'  *  A  man  forges  cold  iron 
Who  thinks  he  can  make  a  gain  without  a  loss." 

The  Marquis  of  Malespina  laughed  at  Raimbaut, 
calling  him  a  "  fiddler,"  or  "  player  of  viols,"  — 
a  term  of  reproach  in  those  days.  Rut  the  tables 
were  turned  when  the  two  men  were  present  at 
a  banquet  given  by  Riatritz  de  Montferrat,  with 
whom  they  were  both  in  love.  Raimbaut  was 
sad  and  dreamy,  but  there  appeared  ' '  two  joglars 

[i34] 


^jK>  The  Troubadour  s  Fiddle  ®X® 

from  France,"  says  the  chronicle,  "  who  played 
an  estampida  [a  gay  air  intended  for  dancing] 
most  merrily  upon  their  rebecs." 

Raimbaut  aroused  himself  from  his  melancholy 
and  composed  so  dainty  and  charming  a  song  to 
the  melody  which  had  been  played,  elaborating 
the  theme  with  such  skill  and  delicacy  upon  his 
own  viol,  that  Malaspina  was  confounded  and  the 
heart  of  the  lady  was  moved  at  last. 

Raimbaut,  in  whom  the  violinist's  soul  was 
keen,  even  though  his  instrument  was  inadequate, 
died  gallantly  in  the  Crusades,  having  carried  his 
beloved  viol  even  into  Palestine,  by  way  of  com- 
fort and  help. 

Then  there  was  Folquet  de  Marseila — cynic, 
scoffer,  adventurer,  even  villain,  more  or  less  ; 
but  brilliant  beyond  most  men.  Folquet,  too, 
was  a  "player  of  viols"  and  a  rare  musician. 
He  had  much  to  do  with  establishing  the  tuning 
system  of  the  viols  and  rebecks  of  his  day.  Viols 
were  tuned  in  the  seven  requisite  modulations  of 
the  ^we  strings  to  make  an  octave,  —  four  principal 
and  four  secondary  tones,  the  lowest  string  giving 
a  tone  that  was  merely  the  octave,  or  doubling  of 
the  treble  string.  It  was  harsh  in  itself,  but 
quite  effective  as  a  support  to  the  higher  and 
purer  note  of  its  octave.      In  shape  the  viol  was 

[i35] 


<K>  The  Heart  of  Music  «> 

very  much  hke  our  viohn,  only  of  course  much 
larger,  heavier,  and  clumsier.  Its  bow  was  a 
cumbersome  article,  awkward  to  hold  and  lying 
weightily  upon  the  strings.  It  was  very  curved 
in  shape,  being  made  of  a  stick  of  flexible  wood 
with  a  crotch  in  one  end.  The  strand  of  horse- 
hair was  tied  in  a  thick  knot  at  one  end,  and  this 
knot  was  pushed  into  the  crotch  when  the  min- 
strel wanted  to  play,  and  when  he  was  through, 
taken  out  to  make  the  bow  easier  to  carry.  But 
more  of  the  viol  and  its  several  varieties  later  on. 

Sometimes  the  viol  and  rebeck  were  played 
with  a  wheel  instead  of  a  bow.  The  method 
was  rather  ingenious  and  interesting,  A  small 
wheel  was  inserted  under  the  strings,  without 
touching  them.  To  this  wheel  was  attached  a 
pivot,  and  a  crank  which  the  player  turned  with 
his  left  band,  the  wheel  revolving  just  underneath 
the  strings.  It  Avas  almost  always  resined  thickly 
and  had  the  additional  quality  of  friction  from 
the  rapid  rotation.  With  the  right  hand  the 
musician  pressed  difTerent  strings  down  upon  the 
edge  of  the  whirling  wheel,  the  contact  giving 
forth  a  shrill  buzzing  or  humming  noise  most 
difficult  to  describe, — and  remarkably  effective 
when  a  staccato  touch  was  required.  Many  of 
the  stringed  instruments  of  the  Middle  Ages  were 

[i36] 


«^  The  Troubadour's  Fiddle  ®» 

played  with  a  wheel,  and  by  many  persons  it  was 
preferred  to  the  bow ;  the  latter  being  infinitely 
more  clumsy  and  difficult  to  manipulate,  and,  in 
that  shape  of  development,  not  greatly  superior 
as  a  tone-producer. 

Gaucelm  Faidit  was  one  of  the  first  viol 
players  of  any  standing  or  reputation.  He  was 
the  favourite  of  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  and  the 
most  irresistible  adventurer  and  universal  lover 
that  ever  played  nuns  out  of  their  cloisters  and 
deniers  out  of  reluctant  pockets. 

There  were  many  other  "players  of  viols" 
—  that  jolly  Falstaffian  prelate,  the  "  Merry  Monk 
of  Montaubon,"  and  the  ".Sappho  of  Provence," 
that  fragile,  dream-filled,  mysterious  Countess  of 
Dia  whose  songs  made  a  music  in  the  ears  of 
men  that  was  not  to  be  forgotten,  and  that  strongly 
influenced  all  subsequent  Provencal  lyrics.  But 
their  name  is  legion,  —  the  troubadours  of  the 
South, — and  with  every  year  they  gained  in 
numbers  as  they  gained  in  skill. 

In  Spain  the  knights  learned  the  craft  of  music 
before  the  nobles  of  almost  any  other  country, 
and  were  renowned  through  many  lands  as  rare 
music  lovers.  And  their  presence  in  Provence 
meant  a  great  leap  ahead  of  the  popularity  of 
lyrical  and  instrumental  music. 

['37] 


<)s>  The  Heart  of  Music  #» 

Provence  was  a  place  of  shrewd  men  and  witty 
women.  Not  for  nothing  had  they  such  proverbs 
as  the  following  :  "A  man's  shadow  is  worth  a 
hundred  women  "  ;  "To  lie  well  is  a  talent,  to 
lie  ill  a  vice"  ;  "  One  half  the  world  laughs  at 
the  other  half"  ;  "  Praise  the  sea,  but  stay  on 
dry  land";  "Water  spoils  wine,  carts  spoil 
roads,  women  spoil  men." 

When  the  foreign  troubadours  came  riding 
down  the  spring  woodways,  blowing  soft 
trumpet  calls  at  their  castle  gates,  and  making 
love  to  their  fair  ladies  with  a  tender  look  and 
a  song  half  ended,  the  blufP  hunting  and  hawk- 
ing lords  bethought  themselves  that  here  w^ere 
enemies  against  their  domestic  peace  ;  enemies 
who  fought  not  in  the  open  and  could  be  met 
and  conquered,  but  on  their  own,  poetic, 
mist-silvered  ground.  Thus  it  was,  says  the 
story,  that  the  Provencal  knights  took  music 
for  their  own  and  raised  it  to  heights  unprece- 
dented, creating  out  of  it  an  art  which  made 
the  troubadours  of  Provence  echo  sweetly 
down  the  centuries.  And  it  was  they  who  gave 
the  Spanish  guitar  its  bow,  who  seized  the 
crwth  or  cruit  and  improved  upon  it,  who 
assimilated  the  best  of  Eastern  and  Teutonic 
music,    and   who,    by    their   eager   requirements 

[i38] 


<s:,p.'p 


The  Troubadour  s  Fiddle  <®> 


and  exacting  demands ,  erected  a  wonderful  stand- 
ard for  bow  instruments,  and  indirectly  called 
into  being  the  rare  and  exquisite  instruments 
which  came  to  Tieffenbriicker  and  Dardelli  in 
their  dreams. 


[139] 


cFuztkez  Lhdventazed 
of  the    yloi 


'In  former  days  we  had  the  violin, 

Ere  the  true  instrument  had  come  about ; 
But  now  we  say,  since  this  all  ears  doth  win. 
The  violin  hath  put  the  viol  out  I  " 


X.  —  Further  Adventures  of  the  Viol 


J.  HE  interest  which  the  vioHn  student,  even 
the  viohn  lover,  must  feel  in  the  viol  above  all 
other  embryotic  fiddle  forms  can  hardly  be  over- 
estimated. The  reader  will  readily  appreciate 
this  fact  if  he  be  first  taught  to  differentiate  be- 
tween such  primitive  instruments  as  the  rebeck, 
rebab,  vielle,  hurdy-gurdy,  trumpet  marine, 
*'  troubadour's  fiddle,  "  and  others  (to  which  the 
name  "viol  "  is  far  too  indiscriminately  applied 
by  fictionists  and  historians  alike)  and  the  gen- 
uine viol.  This  instrument  is  only  one  step 
behind  the  violin,  and  indeed  the  exact  point  of 
division  is  a  debatable  line,  never  to  be  quite 
settled,  probably,  by  the  authorities  on  the  subject. 
So  close  is  the  relationship  that  any  layman  might 
be  pardoned  for  seeing  in  an  advanced  viol  and 
early  violin  the  likeness  of  sisters  rather  than 
that  of  mother  and  daughter. 

The  very  dubiousness  of  this  period  of  violin 
history,  the  very  delicacy  of  touch  and  discrimi- 
nation of  selection  that  are  required,  make  it 
peculiarly  fascinating.  The  exact  points  that 
render  two  instruments  respectively  a  viol  and  a 

[i43] 


<X^  The  Heart  of  Music  <y> 

violin,  instruments  that  were,  perhaps,  produced 
in  the  same  year,  with  much  the  same  shape,  and 
many  other  corresponding  Kkenesses,  must  de- 
Hght  even  the  cursory  student  of  so  elusive  and 
evanescent  a  subject. 

Of  course  we  are  immensely  helped  by  the 
fact  that  "Violin"  is  a  contraction  or  corruption 
of  ' '  violino  "  or  "  little  viol.  "  Yet  this  is  far  from 
being  as  conclusive  as  would  seem  certain  on  the 
face  of  it.  Many  viols  are  small  and  delicate  in 
tone.  Nor  are  the  number  of  strings  an  unfailing 
guide.  To  be  sure,  most  viols  have  five,  six,  or 
seven  strings,  but  some  have  four  ;  many  very 
primitive  instruments,  like  lyres  and  developed 
monochords  and  tamboura,  have  three  and  four 
strings.  Nor  does  the  tuning  help  much.  The 
majority  of  viols  were  tuned  in  thirds  and  fourths  ; 
but  that  some  of  them  must  have  been  tuned  in 
fifths,  like  modern  violins,  is  indicated  by  the 
fact  that  this  was  true  of  the  crwth  and  many 
much  more  elementary  instruments. 

Experts,  authorities,  and  the  unescapable  con- 
noisseur could  doubtless  give  you  a  dozen  or 
twenty  points  of  departure.  I  am  personally  in- 
terested in  none  of  them.  The  very  uncertainty 
delights  me,  and  the  conviction  that  the  difference 
between  a  viol  and  a  violin  is  something  psychical, 

[144] 


<•<>  Further  Adventures  of  the  Viol  ®» 

alchemic,  and  mystical  is  infinitely  more  satisfy- 
ing to  me  than  the  commonplace  credence  of  a 
whole  encyclopaedia  full  of  pleasantly  convincing 
and  utterly  unexciting  facts. 

Perhaps  because  so  perfect  a  thing  as  the  violin 
could  flower  from  no  one  direct  tree  line,  the 
varieties  and  side  developments  of  the  viol  family 
are  legion.  Most  of  them  seem  to  have  been 
grafted  on  Italian  soil. 

I  have  already  submitted  the  old  theory  that  the 
bow  instrument  went  to  Spain,  passing  Italy  by 
completely,  and  not  returning  until  many  years 
later,  with  the  rise  of  the  troubadours'  power. 
This  doubtless  is  the  case,  — one  certainly  does 
not  dare  to  question  the  word  of  the  wise  ;  but 
one  is  amazed  to  find  how  quickly  the  newly 
imported  viol  grew  in  Italy,  gaining  in  less  than 
a  century  (if  the  learned  men  speak  truth)  from 
twelve  to  fifteen  variations.  It  is  odd,  too,  that 
the  country  longest  neglected  in  the  sowing  of  the 
seed  should  eventually  be  the  richest  in  harvest. 

Kerlino,  or  Gerlino,  of  Nuremberg,  as  we  shall 
discover  later,  is  credited  with  introducing  viols 
into  Italy.  Tieffenbriicker,  Dardelli,  Da  Sal6, 
and  others  developed  the  making  of  them  into  an 
art ;  which  of  them  made  the  first  violin  is ,  as 
has  been  said  before,  a  debatable  question. 

[,/,5] 


«s^  The  Heart  of  Music  <» 

The  viol  was  developed  directly  from  the 
vielle,  and  had  four  distinct  variations,  each  one 
of  which  was  developed  in  several  clearly  de- 
fined directions.  These  four  variations  were  as 
follows  : 

First,  the  treble  or  descant  viol,  which  was  the 
smallest  form,  and  corresponds  to  a  rather  over- 
grown violin.  Second,  the  tenor,  which  was 
sometimes  termed  the  viola  da  braccio  in  the 
old  days.  Third,  the  bass  (or  viola  da  gamba); 
and  fourth  and  last,  the  double  bass,  known  then 
as  the  violone,  which  has  remained  unchanged 
in  form,  though  it  has  become  improved  in 
quality,   up  to  the  present  day. 

Perhaps  the  viol  best  known  to  us  to-day,  by 
constant  allusion  in  fiction  and  poetry,  and  even 
through  its  introduction  in  certain  modern  compo- 
sitions, is  the  viola  d'amore.  This  was  a  form 
of  tenor  viol,  which  was  particularly  popular  with 
ancient  buyers,  and  which  is  most  effective  in 
orchestras  of  to-day,  when  used  for  a  solo  against 
a  lighter  stringed  accompaniment.  It  has  seven 
strings  with  stops,  and  an  arrangement  of  5jm- 
pathetic  strings,  of  steel  or  brass,  which  run  under 
the  regular  strings,  passing  through  holes  near  the 
bottom  of  the  bridge,  and  which  are  tuned  to 
the  scale  of  D.      They  are  usually  chromatically 

[146] 


<X>  Further  Adventures  of  the  Viol  <®> 

tuned,  in  which  case  there  are  at  least  seventeen 
sympathetic  strings  to  the  seven  ordinary  ones. 
They  are  usually  not  tuned  by  pegs,  like  the 
others,  but  are  fastened  to  small  nails  or  "  w^rist 
pins"  and  attached  to  the  lower  part  of  the  peg- 
box.  One  variety  of  the  viola  d'amore  was  called 
by  Leopold  Mozart  the  "  English  violet,"  for  no 
other  reason,  seemingly,  than  that  no  instrument 
of  the  sort  was  ever  made,  nor  probably  ever 
played,   in  England. 

Attilio  Ariosti,  a  Dominican  monk,  born  in 
1660,  was  a  skilful  performer  on  the  viola 
d'amore,  and  played  it  as  a  solo  in  Handel's 
"Amadis"  in  London.  Bach,  also,  employed 
this  and  other  forms  of  viols  in  his  scores.  The 
mighty  Johann  Sebastian  used  both  the  viola 
d'amore  and  the  viola  da  gamba  with  great  effect. 
Many  modern  composers  introduce  snatches  of 
melodies  by  these  charming  old  instruments  with 
fine  effect,  but  it  is  usually  some  dramatic  exigency 
which  demands  them,  like,  for  instance,  the  de- 
lightful passages  in  the  first  act  of  Massenet's 
"  Jongleur  de  Notre-Dame.  " 

The  men  who  played  the  viola  d'amore  best 
were  obscure  musicians  and  "  viellists  "  of  cen- 
turies that  took  little  heed  of  the  doings  of  artists. 
Curiously  enough,  the  name  which  seems  to  be 

[147] 


Cs(>  The  Heart  of  Music  ^X^ 

crowned  with  the  greatest  eminence  for  perform- 
ing on  this  instrument  was  that  of  a  man  who 
lived  after  viols  had  gone  out  of  vogue  and  vio- 
lins had  come  in, — Karl  Stamitz,  of  Bohemia, 
born  1746. 

The  viola  da  braccio  (arm  viol),  which  was  a 
form  of  tenor,  was  played  resting  on  the  knee, 
breast,  or  arm.  It  was  made  in  three  sizes,  — 
the  treble,  tenor,  and  alto,  — and  was  sometimes 
called  viola  da  spalla  (shoulder  viol). 

The  viola  da  gamba  was  a  bass  viol,  and  was 
held  between  the  knees  when  played.  Mounted 
with  sympathetic  strings,  like  the  viola  d'amore, 
it  was  known  as  the  viola  bastardo  and  the  viola 
di  fagotto.  Then  there  was  the  viola  di  bordone, 
the  viola  pomposa  (invented  by  Bach),  the  vio- 
letta  marina  (practically  the  same  as  the  viola 
d'amore),  and  several  other  variants  of  the 
humble  precursor  of  the  fiddle. 

Viol  makers  of  the  old  days,  while  holding  no 
great  positions,  and  having  but  narrow  niches  in 
the  temple  of  fame,  nevertheless  were  clever 
men,  and  each  and  all  did  a  thriving  business. 

A,  J.  Hipkins,  writing  about  1877,  says  :  "  .  .  . 
It  is  true  that  in  the  first  half  of  the  last  century 
.  .  .  the  vielle  contributed  to  the  amusement  of 
the  French  higher  classes,  but  evidently  with  that 

[,48] 


>>  Further  Adventures  of  the  Viol 


m0.> 


affectation  of  rusticity  so  abundantly  shown  when 
mock  shepherds  and  shepherdesses  flourished." 

Baptiste  wrote  music  for  the  viol,  and  Bonin 
and  Gorette  published  books  of  instruction  on 
playing  it. 

In  England  they  had,  besides  the  crwth,  a  bow 
instrument  that  was  by  some  historians  styled 
a  lyra,  and  later  lyra-violone,  and  persisted  in 
but  a  slightly  modified  form  for  many  centuries. 
It  was  pear  shaped  and  not  unlike  a  rather 
ungainly  lute  or  mandola. 

This  same  instrument,  played  with  a  silver 
bow,  was  the  favourite  of  Rahere,  minstrel  to 
Henry  II  and  Joculator  Regis  (royal  jester). 
He  was  a  quaint  character,  who  would  have 
nothing  but  the  finest  materials  used  in  the 
making  of  his  instruments,  who  consorted  with 
"thieves  and  fiddlers"  (says  the  chronicle), 
and,  incidentally,  founded  the  Hospice  of  St. 
Bartholomew. 

Colin  Muset,  the  famous  French  minstrel  of 
the  thirteenth  century,  was  as  eccentric.  He 
was  generous  to  a  fault,  would  turn  his  pockets 
inside  out  for  a  friend  or  a  beggar  ;  yet  he  must 
have  the  rarest  wood  and  finest  metals  used  in 
making  his  viols.     He  also  despised  niggardliness. 

*•  Sire,  quens  j'ai  viele," 

[>^9] 


<^:>  The  Heart  of  Music  <» 

he  wrote  indignantly  to  one  miser  for  whom  he 
played, 

"  Devant  vos  en  vostre  otel. 
Si  ne  m'avez  niens  donne, 
Ne  mes  gages  a  quitez, 
G'est  vilanie  I 

(Lord,  when  I  have  fiddled  before  you  in  your 
house,  if  you  give  me  nothing  for  it,  and  pay  me 
not  what  I  have  earned,  —  t  is  villainous!)" 

The  sellers  of  viols  and  other  stringed  instru- 
ments must  have  begun  to  make  fortunes  as  soon 
as  the  art  of  fiddling  was  lifted  by  the  trouba- 
dours from  the  lower  classes  to  be  a  pastime  for 
aristocracy.  Even  as  far  back  as  the  twelfth 
century  Philippe  le  Bel,  in  levying  taxes  on  Paris, 
was  able  to  collect  many  good  livres  from  the 
' '  citolenes,"  sellers  of  stringed  instruments.  One 
maker  of  that  century  is  spoken  of  in  the  French 
archives  as  ' '  Henri  aux  Yieles  (Henri  of  the 
Viols),"  and,  as  one  writer  points  out,  is  probably 
the  first  viol  maker  whose  name  and  art  are 
recorded  in  history. 

In  a  quaint  old  book,  redolent  of  queer  mediae- 
val spices  and  ancient  dreams,  I  found  the  words 
of  a  "Chanson  du  Marchand,"  the  monotonous 
cry  of  a  French  mercer  of  the  thirteenth  century 
trying  to  sell  his  wares  through  the  Paris 
streets  : 

[,5o] 


<^>  Further  Advenlures  of  the  Viol  <a> 

"  Bones  sires,  beles  dames  1 
J'ai  bones  violes, 
J'ai  bones  cordes, 
J'ai  bones  cordes  a  violes, 
Bones  sires,  beles  dames  1  " 

(  "  Good  sirs,  fair  ladies, 

I  have  good  viols, 

I  have  good  strings, 

I  have  good  strings  for  viols. 

Good  sirs,  fair  ladies  I  ") 

The  most  famous  "  luthier "  in  Paris  was 
Maitre  Baton,  who  hved  at  Versailles  and  made 
all  sorts  of  viols,  most  exquisite  in  workmanship 
and  penetrating  in  tone.  His  sons,  Charles  and 
Henri,  played  beautifully  upon  them.  Other 
makers  were  the  brothers  Louvet,  Lambert  of 
Nancy,  Delaunay  of  Paris,  and  Berge  of  Toulouse. 

They  make  a  charming  company,  these  sweet 
old  instruments  of  lost  gray-and-golden  days. 
One  grows  very  fond  of  them  as  one  putters  about 
in  the  half  twilight,  with  the  dust  and  the  rust, 
and  the  powdered  rose-leaves  that  thicken  the 
atmosphere  made  by  the  dear  mediaeval  books. 
One  wishes  one  could  have  been  a  thirteenth, 
fourteenth,  even  a  fifteenth  century  lady,  if  the 
gods  could  afford  to  be  no  kinder,  and  pick  out 
tunes  that  were  all  made  of  four  notes  and  had 
no  time  at  all  to  speak  of,  on  lovely  inlaid  things 
with  strings .      And  it  would  have  been  delightful 

[.5i] 


^X®  The  Heart  of  Music  @» 

to  have  heard  the  queer,  curved  bow  they  loved 
in  those  days,  scraping  worship  fully  upon  the 
strings  of  a  particularly  rare  and  loud-voiced  viol , 
while  one's  chosen  knight  sang  love-songs  to  his 
own  accompaniment,  and  the  inevitable  maid-of- 
honour  kept  watch  in  some  picturesque  turret 
nearby. 

"  There  sat  Dame  Mysuke,  with  all  her  Mynstralsy,  " 

wrote  Master  Hawys,  the  good  English  poet,  in 
"The  Passe  Tyme  of  Pleasure"  (in  iSog,  it  was, 
I  think,  that  he  lived), 

"As  tahoures,  trumpettes,  wyth  pypes  melodyous, 
Sackhuttes,  orgones,  and  the  recorder  swetely, 
Harpes,  lutes,  and  croudes  right  delycyous. »» 

He  knew  enough  to  typify  pleasure  by  a  goodly 
company  of  musical  instruments  ! 

What  dear  people  the  study  of  music  brings 
you  in  contact  with, — dead  people,  I  mean; 
charming  ghosts,  who  used  to  dance  in  the  market 
place,  or  meditate  in  cloisters;  sweet,  kindly, 
merry  ghosts,  who  knew  the  usefulness  of  joy 
and  could  play  the  viol. 


[i5a] 


of  Oytoi 


*'My  life  I  spent  In  the  woods;  while  I  lived  I  was  voiceless.     In 
death  I  sing  sweetly.  — Inscription  on  one  of  Tieffenbriickers  violins. 


XL  —The  Lute  Maker  of  Tyrol 


1  HE  bow  instrument,  thanks  to  the  troubadours 
and  to  the  patronage  of  the  viol  by  the  aristoc- 
racy, was  now  ready  to  take  a  more  prominent 
place  in  the  world.  Though  the  violin  was  not 
yet  a  thing  finished  and  perfected,  it  was  growing 
into  its  complete  beauty  and  its  full  power.  The 
day  of  its  crowning  was  not  far  distant.  To 
reach  that  height  of  art  upon  which  her  single 
violin  was  to  incarnate  the  abstract  glory  of 
music,  there  was  one  essential  middle  ground 
to  be  crossed,  —  that  of  stringed  orchestras,  the 
bow  instruments  in  the  aggregate,  the  apotheosis 
not  of  the  violin  but  of  violins. 

From  the  beginning  of  musical  history  there 
had  been  stringed  instruments  ;  notably,  as  we 
may  remember,  in  Egypt  and  Assyria  ;  but  the 
first  organised  orchestras  of  viols  and  other  bow 
instruments  were  probably  established  under  the 
patronage  of  the  German  nobles  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  These  private  orchestras  were  used  for 
feasts  and  merry-making,  like  the  music  of  the 
jongleurs,  but  their  mission  was  a  trifle  more 
extended  ;    they  played    important   parts  in    the 

[i55] 


<>;>   The  Heart  of  Music  <i®> 

chapel  exercises,  after  musical  Luther  and  the 
Reformation  had  arrived,  and  they  stood  also  for  a 
certain  access  of  cultivation  and  taste.  Stringed 
music  began  to  be  something  of  an  art,  instead  of 
a  trick  and  trade  in  one,  and  a  little  of  the  sober 
application  of  the  Egyptians  returned,  accom- 
panied by  a  slight  rise  in  the  standing  of  the 
musician.  This  last  innovation  w^as  a  more 
gradual  matter,  how^ever.  To  be  sure,  the 
players  of  viols  and  other  instruments  were  no 
longer  classed  as  outlaws  and  animals,  but  they 
still  held  no  social  or  civil  position,  and  while  not 
actually  disenfranchised  by  law,  were  practically 
outlawed  by  prejudice. 

But  their  instruments  grew  swiftly  in  beauty 
and  perfection  after  the  fifteenth  century.  All 
over  the  world  the  makers  of  lutes  and  viols  were 
kept  busy  improving  their  handiwork,  choosing 
finer  woods  and  inventing  more  sensitive  models, 
experimenting  with  strings,  trying  new  positions 
for  sound-holes  and  bridges,  and  strings,  and 
striving,  though  more  clumsily  and  slowly,  to  im- 
prove the  bow. 

All  over  Saxony  in  particular  clever  vendors  of 
instruments  were  making  discoveries  almost  daily, 
—  sometimes  by  accident,  sometimes  by  con- 
jecture, sometimes,  only  more  rarely,   by  calcu- 

[i56] 


®:X>  The  Lute  Maker  of  Tyrol  ®>> 

lation.  Tests  for  the  resonance  of  wood  were  in- 
stituted, and  many  wonderful  things  about  sound- 
waves were  learned  laboriously  by  eager  workmen 
in  tiny  old  towns,  bending  for  amazing  lengths  of 
time  over  the  fashioning  of  imperfect  instruments. 

Through  their  imperfections  came  their  per- 
fections, eventually,  albeit  dimly  seen  then. 
For  these  Saxon  and  Tyrolese  workmen,  who 
lived  forever  with  their  instruments,  knew  and 
loved  them  as  children  and  friends.  Most  of  them 
were  hereditary  instrument  makers,  carrying  on 
their  trade  from  generation  to  generation,  and 
they  must  have  learned  from  the  very  limi- 
tations of  their  beloved  viols  and  lutes  what  their 
capacities  might  be. 

Strange  that  the  first  great  violin  maker  should 
have  come  from  a  house  noted  for  many  years  for 
its  brilliant  record  in  lute-making.  The  regular 
viol  makers  of  the  day  seemed  to  have  plodded 
on  more  slowly,  but  to  Kaspar  Tieffenbriicker  is 
generally  ascribed  the  honour  of  making  the  first 
genuine  violin  in  1 5 1 1 .  This  has  been  disputed 
by  some  learned  men,  but  we  find  such  authorities 
as  Wasielewski  and  Emil  Naumann  accepting  it ; 
the  former  stating  positively  that  there  are  still  in 
existence  three  excellent  violins  by  Tieffenbriicker, 
dated  respectively  i5ii,  1617,  and  1 5 1 9 . 

[■57] 


«0  The  Heart  of  Music  <®> 

The  family  of  Tieffenbriicker  was  far-famed 
for  the  marvellous  lutes  which  it  gave  to  the 
world.  Troubadours  and  jongleurs,  dilettante 
knights  and  lyrically  inclined  ladies  went  to 
the  little  workshops  under  the  shadow  of  the 
Tyrolean  hills  to  buy  the  dainty,  inlaid  instru- 
ments so  celebrated  in  the  Old  World.  Before 
they  were  lute  makers  they  had  been  carpenters, 
common  workmen  who  made  what  the  public 
chanced  to  want.  But  they  had  beauty-loving 
souls,  the  Tieffenbriicker  men,  and  when  they 
finally  took  up  the  making  of  instruments  as  their 
specialty,  their  lutes  were  pre-eminent  for  beauty, 
alike  of  tone  and  of  form. 

The  illustrious  TiefiFenbriicker  names — in  what 
chronological  order  we  do  not  know  —  were 
Wendelin,  Leonhard,  Leopold,  Uldrich,  Magnus, 
and  Kaspar.  Magnus  gained  some  reputation  as 
a  lute  maker  in  Venice  in  1607  ;  but  Kaspar  was 
the  really  celebrated  son  of  the  house,  —  the  only 
one  whose  name  can  be  written  in  gold  on  the 
tables  comprising  the  history  of  the  violin. 

The  story  goes  that  Kaspar  Tieffenbriicker  was 
brought  up,  like  his  father  and  brothers,  to  make 
lutes,  but  he  was  one  of  the  naturally  progressive 
spirits  who  are  fitted  for  creative,  inventive  work 
rather  than  the  capable  following  of  any  beaten 

[i58] 


<$  M'  "& 


The  Lute  Maker  of  Tyrol  «® 


path.  He  had  yearnings  toward  the  perfect  vio- 
hn, — the  thing  that  only  one  master  was  to 
achieve,  a  master  not  yet  born.  To  this  end  he 
took  up  the  study  of  bow  instruments.  Rank 
heresy  it  was,  for  his  father  scorned  the  clumsy 
viols  of  the  day,  and  had  spent  his  long  life  in 
the  making  of  lutes  as  fine  as  shells  in  form  and 
as  sweet  in  tone  as  the  voices  of  streams.  But 
Kaspar  worked  still  at  his  viols ,  —  worked  from 
red  sunrise  to  red  sunset,  and  far  into  the  night, 
when  the  stars  rained  white  fire  upon  the  hills 
and  the  wind  made  violin  music  around  the  little 
workshop. 

Now,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the  bow  instru- 
ments of  that  day  were  cumbersome,  crude, 
unwieldy  things ;  they  were  hard  to  handle, 
hard  to  balance,  hard  to  play,  and  many  of  them 
even  harder  to  listen  to. 

An  instrument  which  we  call  the  tenor  viol 
was  then  played  in  all  the  private  orchestras, 
although  its  inconvenient  form  —  between  a  vio- 
lin and  a  violoncello  —  made  it  very  awkward 
and  difficult  to  play.  Its  tone  was  much  softer 
than  the  rebeck  and  German  "  geige  "  (fiddle), 
which  were  still  in  vogue,  but  it  lacked  not 
only  suitability  of  size  but  carrying  power  of 
tone.     The  violin,  when  it  came  into  use,  was  not 

[159] 


<s-.;  ,Si ,® 


The  Heart  of  Music 


received  tenderly  by  musicians.  Its  chief  quality 
in  its  first  fledged  state  was  its  resonance  and 
high,  almost  screaming  pitch.  Even  so  late  as 
the  seventeenth  century  we  find  Ogden  speaking 
of  "  the  sharp  violin,  "  and  Mace  of  "  the  scold- 
ing violin,"  —  and  the  sixteenth  century  critics 
had  harsher  terms.  The  modelled  back,  so  essen- 
tial to  the  resonance  of  the  true  violin,  was 
perhaps  the  most  distinguishing  feature  of  the 
instrument  as  it  was  in  the  era  of  TiefFenbriicker. 
The  tuning  of  the  strings  in  fifths,  while  charac- 
teristic and  important,  did  not  originate  with  the 
lute  makers  of  Tyrol,  but  had  flourished  spas- 
modically for  nearly  two  centuries  in  certain 
varieties  of  the  rebeck  and  primitive  viol. 

Still  following  the  old  story,  for  the  truth  of 
which  we  do  not  pretend  to  vouch,  we  must 
accompany  Kaspar  Tieffenbriicker  on  what  was  in 
those  days  a  very  considerable  journey  to  Italy. 
Apparently  he  quarrelled  with  his  father  on  the 
question  of  the  house  tradition,  which  was  that 
the  oldest  son  should  always  be  a  lute  maker. 
A  pioneer  in  heart  and  body  alike,  the  Tyrolese 
workman  left  his  snows  and  quietudes  to  enter 
a  town  which  continued  to  be  a  fairly  and  busy 
progressive  one  for  those  days,  —  Bologna. 

Once  in  Italy,  he  could  make  what  instruments 

[i6o] 


^y^  The  Lute  Maker  of  Tyrol  ®X^ 

he  chose,  and  he  found  himself  a  workshop  and 
began  his  real  hfe  as  a  maker  of  violins.  Tlie 
Italians  recognised  his  gifts  and  accepted  him 
with  open  arms  ;  and  in  most  ways  his  day  of 
fame  was  a  bright  one.  He  quickly  lost  the 
German  in  his  name  and  became,  instead  of  Kas- 
par  TiefFenbriicker,  Caspar  de  Duiffopruggar  — 
which  rather  elongated  and  elaborated  corruption 
seems  to  have  been  the  nearest  approach  to  his 
actual  appellation  of  which  his  Italian  admirers 
were  capable.  TiefFenbriicker  —  for  so  we  must 
still  call  him,  in  spite  of  his  newly  Latinised  name 
—  became  not  only  the  friend  and  help  of  musi- 
cians, but  the  consort  of  the  Italian  nobles.  Pri- 
vate orchestras  had  become  the  pastime  then  in 
Italy,  as  in  Germany,  and  the  princes  of  Bologna 
and  other  cities  desired  the  best  and  newest  styles 
of  instruments  to  be  added  to  their  palace  stock. 
Tieffenbrucker,  whose  personality  was  as  rarely 
charming  as  his  skill  was  unusual,  quickly 
gained  the  confidence  and  liking  of  these  erratic 
masters  of  the  vogue.  He  was  not  without  the 
gift  of  diplomacy,  the  simple  lute  maker  from 
Tyrol.  It  was  a  pretty  trick  of  his  to  ornament 
his  choicest  instruments  with  the  portraits,  arms, 
or  coronets  of  influential  princes,  all  in  fine  gold, 
exquisitely   inlaid,    and   perfect   in   design.      He 

[i6i] 


<X>  The  Heart  of  Music  ^}s> 

was  fond,  too,  of  reproducing  upon  his  viohns 
copies  of  celebrated  paintings,  landscapes,  and 
occasionally  imaginary  pictures,  allegorical  or 
symbolic  in  significance.  Usually  he  contrived 
to  have  the  decorations  upon  the  back  and  belly 
of  his  instrument  different,  yet  of  some  character 
that  harmonised  in  idea.  Whatever  fugitive 
poet-soul  or  artistic  heart  the  man  possessed  vv^ent 
into  these  imperfect  violins  of  his ,  which  he  loved 
as  some  men  love  their  verses  and  others  their 
children. 

One  day  he  fashioned  a  wonderfully  lovely 
instrument  from  wood  which  he  had  chosen 
himself,  away  in  an  Italian  forest,  and  upon  it 
he  inscribed  this  rather  unusual  sentence  :  "\iva 
fui  in  sylvis  ;  dum  vixi  tacui ;  mortua  dulce 
cano,"  which  interpreted  means:  "My  life  I 
spent  in  the  woods  ;  while  I  lived  I  was  voice- 
less ;   now  in  death  I  sing  sweetly." 

He  was  not  without  a  spice  of  wholesome  ego- 
tism, was  Tieffenbriicker,  for  he  ornamented 
many  of  his  instruments  with  pictures  of  himself. 
Thanks  to  them  we  have  a  fairly  accurate  idea  of 
his  personal  appearance,  for  it  is  difficult  to  be- 
lieve, having  seen  them,  that  any  of  them  can 
have  been  much  flattered.  His  most  predomi- 
nant characteristic,  physically  speaking,  seems  to 

[162] 


<X^  The  Lute  Maker  of  Tyrol  %Kp 

have  been  the  enormous  size  of  his  hands  and  his 
head.  The  one  makes  him  look  workmanhke  and 
capable,  the  other  dignified  and  serious,  but  tlie 
high,  narrow-arched  forehead  and  huge  shoulders 
seem  somehow  out  of  harmony  with  each  other. 
His  eyes  are  rather  near  together  and  deeply 
set,  his  nose  straight,  his  expression  direct  and 
grave,  his  mouth  sufficiently  sensuous  for  a  true 
musician.  Altogether  the  man  looks  attractive, 
if  we  may  believe  his  portraits,  most  of  which 
have  been  by  himself,  with  no  flattery  of  him  or 
sparing  of  uncomplimentary  detail  as  to  contour, 
wrinkles,  and  expression. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  the  statement  made  by 
many  authorities  that  Tieffenbriicker  was  origi- 
nally an  inlayer  and  worker  in  fine  mosaics, 
when  in  Tyrol.  If  this  is  true,  as  is  quite  possi- 
ble (the  ornamentation  of  instruments  then  being 
so  very  ornate  that  some  superficial  "fine  art" 
was  essential  in  the  maker  of  them),  the  fact 
would  explain  the  peculiarly  delicate  work  which 
we  find  in  his  instruments,  particularly  those  of 
the  latter  part  of  his  life.  In  the  year  i5i5 
Francois  I  ascended  the  throne  of  France,  and 
the  following  year  saw  his  Italian  difficulties 
adjusted  and  a  deputation  chosen  to  bring  to 
the  Parisian  court  such   bright  particular  lights 

[i63] 


<¥>  The  Heart  of  Music  <X®' 

of  Italy  as  his  majesty  considered  would  shine 
most  acceptably  in  the  Louvre.  The  Cardinal 
of  Ferrara  was  chief  emissary.  Francois  was 
destined  to  influence  the  life  of  the  Tyrolese 
master  as  he  influenced  the  lives  of  so  many 
great  men  of  his  time,  as  he  influenced  Da  \inci, 
and  Jean  Goujeau,  and  Rossi,  and  Primiatice,  and 
Benvenuto  Cellini,  and  Andrea  del  Sarto,  and 
hosts  of  others.  This  rarely  artistic  monarch, 
who  was  to  make  the  Louvre  more  than  ever  a 
thing  of  joy  to  beauty  lovers,  to  create  a  new 
era  in  Gobelin  tapestries,  and  to  achieve  other 
eminences  in  aestheticism,  chose  to  summon  to 
France  the  gifted  "  Duiffbpruggar,"  lutes,  viols, 
and  all.  The  Cardinal  of  Ferrara  brought  the 
violin  maker  to  Paris,  together  with  a  glorious 
company  of  which  Leonardo  da  Vinci  was  one, 
Benvenuto  Cellini  another,  and  other  great  names 
not  lacking. 

The  simple,  gracious  lutanist  was  bewildered 
and  overawed  by  the  gorgeousness  of  the  French 
court,  but  he  went  to  work  in  the  room  allotted 
him  to  make  the  instruments  which  the  king 
desired.  Francois  wished  several  of  Tiefien- 
brlicker's  most  perfect  viols  for  his  chapel,  and 
the  Tyrolese,  glowing  with  excitement  and  appre- 
ciation of  the  rare  honour  done  him,  toiled  early 

[164] 


<K>  The  Lute  Maker  of  Tyrol  <K^ 

and  late  upon  instruments  that  should  be  as  ex- 
quisite as  jewels.  The  courtiers  laughed  at  his 
devotion  to  his  6ccupation ;  the  ladies  were  less 
mockingly  interested.  What  woman  does  not 
love  the  creator  of  sweet  sounds  ?  Tieffenbriicker 
might  have  played  at  hearts  at  court,  if  he  had 
had  eyes  for  any  loves  save  his  violins  and  lutes  ; 
but  his  was  no  fickle  passion.  But  alas  for  the 
trust  that  genius  will  always  insist  upon  putting 
in  princes !  Francois  accepted  the  instruments, 
praised  the  maker,  made  him  an  honoured  guest 
at  court,  and  showed  his  prizes  to  everyone  whom 
they  might  be  likely  to  impress ;  but  he  never  paid 
for  them  ! 

It  is  about  this  point  in  his  history  that  we  find 
the  significant  statement  that  the  viol  maker  left 
Paris  "  because  the  climate  did  not  agree  with  him." 
Poor  Tieffenbriicker  I 

He  went  to  Lyons  and  established  himself 
there  permanently  ;  and  it  was  there,  indeed,  that 
he  made  his  finest  instruments  —  notably  one  with 
a  scroll  composed  of  a  horse's  head  exquisitely 
carved  and  finished,  and  one  ornamented  with 
a  design  representing  a  man  bending  over  an 
hourglass.  There,  too,  he  executed  his  famous 
"  geographical  viol,"  with  his  map  of  Paris  upon 
its  back,  all  in  finest  inlaying. 

[,65] 


CCs*  The  Heart  of  Music  C<® 

One  of  his  friends  —  made  perhaps  while  in 
Italy,  but  more  probably  through  that  journey  of 
genius  into  France  marshalled  by  the  Italian 
cardinal  —  was  Leonardo  da  \inci,  and  more  than 
one  of  the  most  original  and  beautiful  designs  on 
Tieffenbriicker's  instruments  were  the  work  of 
this  great  artist. 

Our  "luthier's"  troubles  were  not  yet  entirely 
over ;  a  knavish  sculptor  named  Baccio  Bandi- 
nelli,  renowned  for  his  sly,  thieving  propensities, 
claimed  as  his  many  of  Tieffenbriicker's  own  de- 
signs, and  injured  the  lutanist's  good  repute  in 
several  instances.  But  Bandinelli  was  too  noted 
a  thief  to  have  any  serious  or  lasting  effect  upon 
the  name  and  fame  of  a  master  of  Tieffenbrucker's 
standing. 

His  last  years  were  spent  peacefully  and  pros- 
perously enough,  so  far  as  we  know,  and  the 
probability  is  that  he  died  in  Lyons,  where  he 
had  worked  during  his  last  and  most  successful 
years.  Of  this,  however,  there  is  only  circum- 
stantial evidence. 

Much  of  Tieffenbrucker's  life  is  so  vaguely  and 
often  so  contradictorily  chronicled  in  various  his- 
tories that  it  is  hard  to  even  gain  such  an  idea 
of  him  and  of  his  work  as  may  seem  likely  to  be 
reasonably  true.      But,  after  all,  in  such  dilemmas 

[i66] 


'<W>  The  Lute  Maker  of  Tyrol  <®> 

it  IS  worse  then  useless  to  theorise  or  search  too 
closely.  Such  "  facts"  as  may  have  come  to  us, 
mythical  or  well-substantiated,  we  must  accept 
perforce  and  fit  together  as  best  we  may.  If 
the  pieces  do  not  join  smootlily,  we  have  two 
courses  open  to  us, — either  to  discard  some  frag- 
ments or  to  call  in  imagination  to  cement  them 
all  into  harmony. 

The  statements  of  the  wise  persons  who  declare, 
undoubtedly  with  excellent  reason,  that  no  genu- 
ine violins  were  made  before  i520,  we  cannot 
rob  Kaspar  Tieffenbriicker  of  the  golden  credit 
that  lies  to  his  name  in  the  bank  of  public  grati- 
tude. Though  there  are  those  who  dispute  the 
fact  that  he  could  have  made  what  one  history 
declares  were  "very  superior  violins,"  the 
musical  world  will  continue  blindly  to  hail  him 
as  one  of  the  first  violin  makers,  and  to  honour 
him  as  such  in  a  glorious  company  of  which 
one  master,  laurel  crowned  but  silent,  is  the 
beloved  and  true  king,  —  Stradivari. 

Tieffenbriicker' s  career  was  a  long  and  illus- 
trious one  and  he  had  many  followers  and  pupils, 
some  of  them  doubtless  who  had  been  apprenticed 
to  him  in  Tyrol  and  had  shared  his  fortunes 
cheerfully  ever  since  ;  others  whom  he  had  picked 
up  in  Bologna  and  neighbouring  Italian  towns, 

[167] 


<)8>  The  Heart  of  Music  <>> 

as  well  as  in  Paris  and  Lyons  later.  His  inde- 
pendence was  complete,  his  insurrection  against 
Tieffenbriicker  traditions  eminently  successful  and 
memorable.  Yet  it  is  a  thing  most  strange  to 
note  that  in  the  best  portrait  of  himself  that  he 
ever  left,  a  portrait  executed  not  many  years 
before  his  death,  he  is  depicted  surrounded, 
not  by  the  violins  of  his  life  work  and  love, 
but  by  the  lutes  that  his  fathers  had  fashioned 
for  generations  in  the  shadows  of  the  great  hills 
of  Tyrol. 


[1 68] 


me  ytay  cfxiaz 
and  OtkezA 


"Wistaria-blossoms  trail  and  fall 
About  the  length  of  barrier-wall, 
And  softly,  now  and  then. 
The  shy,  staid-breasted  doves  will  flit 
Athwart  the  belfry  towers,  and  sit. 
And  watch  the  ways  of  men." 

Austin  Dobson, 

"Into  convents,  from  Avhich  arose,  day  and  night,  the  holy  hymns 
with  which  its  tones  were  blended." — O.  W.  Holmes  on  "  The  Violin." 


XII.  —  The  Gray  Friar  and  Others 


IN  the  transition  stage  from  viols  to  vioUns 
many  names  shoAv  up  in  vivid  relief  against  the 
confusion  of  change,  development,  and  compli- 
cated groAvth.  Notably  we  find  that  of  Joan 
Kerlino,  corrupted  to  Jean  Gerlino,  the  lulanist 
from  Niiremberg,  who  migrated  to  Brescia  in 
14^9  and  made  violins  of  a  primitive  but  still 
promising  type.  La  Borde  insists  that  Kerlino 
was  a  Breton,  but  there  is  small  evidence  to 
substantiate  the  theory  and  much  to  prove  him 
to  have  been  of  German  birth. 

Next  in  the  list  of  pioneers  we  find  a  name 
much  more  illustrious,  though,  unfortunately, 
scarcely  better  known, — that  of  Pietro  Dardelli, 
the  Gray  Friar  of  Mantua.  This  brilliant  man, 
perhaps  because  of  the  seclusion  arid  privacy 
given  by  his  habit,  is  almost  an  unheard-of 
character  in  musical  history,  in  spite  of  his 
signally  valuable  work  in  the  development  of  the 
early  violin  forms. 

The  convent  of  Mantua  was  one  patronised 
largely  by  ladies  of  noble  birth.  Ugly  daughters 
of  great  houses  ;   rebellious  maidens  who  refused 

[■7'] 


<0  The  Heart  of  Music  <^> 

to  consider  splendid  marriages  ;  sad  girls  whose 
lovers  had  died  or  been  separated  from  them ; 
widows  who  scorned  secular  consolation  ;  women 
of  title  who  were  safest  out  of  the  way  for  politi- 
cal or  state  reasons  ;  pious  ladies  whose  vocations 
demanded  fitting  recognition,  but  who,  because 
of  their  birth,  could  not  enter  less  distinguished 
orders  —  all  these  came  in  dove-flocks  to  Mantua, 
there  to  settle,  softly,  and  learn  the  ways  and 
Avords  of  the  Un-World. 

Pietro  Dardelli's  real  name  was  Pietro  Zamure. 
IIow  he  gained  the  Dardelli,  sometimes  called 
D'Ardelli,  is  not  known,  unless  it  was  some  ob- 
solete title  in  his  family,  revived  for  professional 
purposes. 

"  Supposing  this  explanation  to  have  been  the 
true  one,"  says  one  writer,  "we  are  all  the 
more  puzzled,  for  being  a  religeux,  the  Gray  Friar 
was  not  permitted  to  make  violins  for  sale,  and 
therefore  could  have  had  no  object  in  a  nomme  de 
guerre,  and  could  have  gained  no  advantage  from 
advertisement. 

In  I  Boo  Dardelli  is  believed  to  have  begun 
work.  The  statements  that  some  of  his  instru- 
ments are  dated  1/196-97  may  be  true,  but  it  is 
fairly  well  proven  that  he  contributed  no  very 
valuable  additions    to    the   viols   and   violins   of 

[172] 


«>  The  Gray  Friar  and  Others  <» 

history  until  after  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  He  was  cordelier,  or  lutanist,  to  the 
Mantua  convent  for  many  years.  Indeed  he  was 
so  young  a  man  when  he  first  assumed  his  duties 
there  that  his  title  "II  Padre"  was  considered 
by  his  superior  and  the  chaplain  in  the  light  of 
a  joke. 

His  cell  was  fitted  up  as  a  workshop,  and  he 
toiled  and  dreamed  there  in  company  with  his 
varnish  pots  and  fine  tools,  with  the  south  wind 
blowing  in  softly,  and  the  faint,  monotonous 
voices  of  the  nuns  wafted  from  the  chapel. 

Sometimes  the  young  "Padre"  would  drop 
his  tools  and  fall  to  thinking  more  and  more 
deeply,  until  the  slow,  conventual  minutes  had 
grown  to  hours,  and  some  distant  bell  roused 
him  to  a  realisation  that  he  was  idling.  Into  the 
distance  stretched  the  cream-white  highroad, 
winding  away  on  both  sides,  —  winding  to  Cre- 
mona, to  Brescia,  to  Verona.  We  remember 
that  Romeo  tore  himself  from  Juliet  at  daybreak 
to  travel  on  "the  road  to  Mantua,"  and  the 
whole  country  is  steeped  in  romance,  even  to  our 
remote  modern  senses  ;  magic  rises  in  exhalations 
from  the  very  earth  of  it. 

Roof  on  roof,  the  Gray  Friar  could  count  the 
houses  all  about  ;   salmon-pink,   saffron,  and 

[173] 


®jKp  The  Heart  of  Music  <:<> 

violet-gray  they  were,  with  the  gay  spatter  of 
gardens  and  children  in  between.  Bars  of  level 
sunlight  he  saw,  and  the  banked,  pearl-crusted 
clouds  above  ;  and  there  were  olive-groves  and 
vineyards,  — softly  green,  and  full  of  the  message 
of  fruition  and  the  clarion  call  of  plenty.  All 
these  things  were  to  be  seen  from  those  high 
barred  slits  in  the  wall  of  the  convent — you 
could  not  quite  call  them  windows.  All  of  them 
were  for  any  man's  claiming,  any  man  who  could 
go  abroad  penniless  and  barefoot;  but  not  for  the 
Gray  Friar  of  Mantua,  whose  stomach  was  well 
lined  and  Avhose  habit  was  warm.  The  Gray 
Friar  of  Mantua  must  be  content  on  such  merry 
dreams  as  he  might  weave  for  himself  between 
aves  and  lute-making. 

Outside  the  grated  windows  of  the  convent  grew 
pear  trees.  In  spring  they  bloomed  riotously, 
and  made  a  sort  of  fragrant  poetry  under  April 
moons.  In  the  garden  certain  of  the  nuns  had 
coaxed  up  flowers  of  red  and  blue  and  purple. 
The  blossoms  hung  their  faces,  all  rainbow  bells 
and  stars,  before  the  wind;  and  when  the  sun 
burned  hottest,  at  noon,  they  gave  up  a  very 
passion  of  warm-steeped  perfume  that  made  the 
senses  swim  and  dip  as  though  at  sea  on  tropical 
waters.      There  were  honeybees   in  the  garden, 

[174] 


«®  The  Gray  Friar  and  Others  ^:®> 

drunk  with  the  wine  nature  gives  her  own;  they 
murmured  and  hummed  languidly  and  melodi- 
ously over  the  drooping  flowers,  and  the  nuns 
heard  the  music  and  wondered  —  some  of  them 
—  what  it  meant.  But  they  all  listened  to  it, 
and  noted  that  the  scent  from  the  garden  some- 
times grew  too  heavy,  and  made  their  eyelids 
droop  like  the  flowers. 

One  day  the  Duchess  of  Mantua  came  to  the 
convent.  It  was  a  day  written  in  fire  upon  heaven 
— for  the  Gray  Friar.  Whether  the  Duchess's 
visit  was  a  formal  one,  or  rather  in  the  nature  of 
a  retreat,  we  do  not  know,  — probably  the  latter, 
as  it  was  rather  the  fashion  for  great  ladies  to 
seclude  themselves  from  time  to  time  in  a  cloister, 
to  meditate  and  drink  milk.  It  took  the  place  of 
a  rest  cure. 

For  the  Duchess  the  Gray  Friar  made  a  lute 
which,  in  1807,  was  sufficiently  beautiful  to  be 
treasured  by  the  painter,  Richard  of  Lyons,  as 
one  of  his  rarest  possessions.  This  lute  was 
made  of  ivory  and  ebony,  wonderfully  worked 
and  fitted  together.  The  back  and  sides  were 
separated  by  perfectly  curved  and  tempered  bands 
of  purest  silver.  On  the  rounded  and  polished 
back  were  the  arms  of  the  Dukes  of  Mantua,  in 
very  deep,  vivid  colours  and  heavy  inlayings  of 

[175] 


<X>  The  Heart  of  Music  ®» 

goldleaf,  as  well  as  the  maker's  name,  Dardelli. 
What  romance  went  into  this  lovely  little  instru- 
ment no  one  Avill  ever  know;  it  was  a  triumph 
of  the  art  of  the  sixteenth  century  ' '  luthiers  ' '  and 
the  child  of  the  Gray  Friar's  dearest  dreams. 

It  was  by  his  viols,  however,  that  he  won  his 
really  serious  and  important  place  in  musical 
history.  His  most  famous  violin  is  the  one  still 
on  exhibition  in  the  museum  at  South  Kensington. 
Its  sound-holes  are  circular  instead  of /-shaped, 
and  it  has  no  bass  bar,  so  that  it  could  ne^er 
support  the  normal  tension  of  the  strings,  but 
its  sound-post  is  modern  in  character  and  position, 
and  its  four  strings  correspond  in  tuning  to  the 
four  strings  of  the  perfected  violin.  In  his  quiet 
convent  cell,  the  Gray  Friar  Avorked  out  more 
than  one  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  violin- 
making. 

Dardelli's  pupils  were  several,  and  his  followers 
many.  Notable  among  the  former  were  Morglato 
Morella,  of  Mantua,  and  Peregrino  (or  Pelegrino) 
Zanetto.  of  Brescia.  Morella,  sometimes  called 
Morglato,  of  Mantua,  was  barely  more  than  an 
enthusiastic  imitator,  but  Zanetto  was  a  really 
remarkable  man.  His  tenors  and  double  basses 
were  immensely  superior  to  his  violins,  but  he 
has  one  immortal  distinction.      He  is  reputed  to 

[176] 


<^>  The  Gray  Friar  and  Others  <®> 

have  had  a  hand  in  the  education  of  Andrea 
Amati,  the  first  of  the  famous  viohn  makers  of 
Cremona.  This  honour  has  also  been  ascribed 
to  Maggini,  the  pupil  of  the  great  Gasparo  da  Sal6. 
All  three  of  these  celebrated  men,  Zanetto,  Salo, 
and  Maggini,  lived  in  Brescia,  at  that  time  pre- 
eminent among  all  the  tow^ns  of  Italy  for 
violin-making. 

Fortunate  Brescia  was  at  that  time  a  cheerful, 
busy  town  on  a  plain  at  the  foot  of  the  mountains. 
It  was  watered  by  the  river  Garga,  —  the  water 
supply  having  been  carried  through  the  town  by 
Didier,  King  of  the  Lombards.  It  had  had  a 
warlike  history  even  then,  and  was  proud  of  its 
arsenal  and  heavy  city  walls.  It  was  proud  too  of 
its  "  Palloda,"  the  great  clock  tower  in  the  centre 
of  it,  and  of  its  historic  record  in  metal  working, 
particularly  in  the  making  of  armour.  It  must 
have  been  very  progressive  for  Italy,  for  a  traveller, 
only  a  little  later  than  the  time  of  which  we  are 
writing,  notes  with  surprise  that  the  women  moved 
about  the  streets  unquestioned.  The  streets  were 
narrow,  the  houses  close  together,  the  people 
hurried  and  energetic.  Here  was  the  Italian 
cradle  of  violin-making. 

Gasparo  Bertolotti  was  one  of  the  very  rare 
makers, — one  whose   genius   created  an   epoch 

[177] 


<€?>  The  Heart  of  Music  @X> 

instead  of  doing  it  honour.  He  made  history 
instead  of  illuminating  it,  and  established  forms 
and  styles  instead  of  improving  upon  them. 
Although,  like  Zanetto,  he  excelled  in  tenors  and 
the  larger  variations  of  the  violin  maker's  craft, 
his  work  permanently  influenced  subsequent  fiddle 
makers  and  made  a  sharp  and  individual  mark 
upon  the  development  of  the  violin. 

It  is  a  source  of  regret  to  music  lovers  that  w^e 
know  so  little  of  the  personal  life  of  this  giant 
master,  —  known  to  us  as  Gasparo  da  Salo, — 
who  took  his  place  so  vigorously  and  brilliantly 
in  the  history  of  viol  music.  He  was  born  at 
Salo,  a  tiny  village  flung  down  on  the  shores  of 
the  blue  lake  of  Garda.  He  made  all  the  varieties 
of  the  instruments  of  the  viol  family,  but  to-day 
the  only  really  valued  monuments  to  his  skill  or 
talent  are  his  tenors  and  double  basses.  In  the 
making  of  these  no  one  has  ever  eclipsed  him. 
His  tenors  are  a  trifle  large  for  complete  ease  in 
execution,  but  they  are  extraordinary  in  quality 
and  bring  fabulous  sums  on  any  such  rare  occa- 
sion as  may  find  one  upon  the  market.  His 
instruments  were  remarkable,  among  other 
reasons,  for  his  extraordinary  varnish,  which 
was  almost  black,  and  very  rich  and  heavy. 
The    effect   was    superb,  and    the    formula    was 

[178] 


^Xp  The  Gray  Friar  and  Others  <>>> 

a  matter  of  pride  with  him,  as  well  as  a  pro- 
found secret. 

He  was  born  in  the  last  half  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  his  period  of  activity  extended  into 
the  seventeenth.  He  worked  chiefly  in  Brescia, 
and  like  Zanetto  and  Maggini  is  always  classed 
with  the  "famous  Brescian  makers." 

The  only  famous  violin  ever  made  by  Gasparo 
da  Salo  was  that  which  is  known  as  the  ' '  Treasury 
Violin."  It  was  originally  made  by  command 
of  Cardinal  Allobrandini,  and  Benvenuto  Cellini 
sculptured  it  elaborately  for  the  maestro,  who 
was  his  friend.  It  is  also  called  sometimes  the 
"Violin  of  the  Caryatids,"  because  of  the  ex- 
quisite representation  of  the  latter.  The  bridge, 
which  is  of  boxwood,  is  carved  into  the  semblance 
of  two  fishes.  It  lay  in  the  Treasury  of  Hungary 
for  many  years,  and  was  finally  left  to  the  great 
Paganini  by  the  Hungarian  noble  Councillor 
Rhehazek.  The  fish,  or  pisces,  happened  to  be 
Paganini' s  zodiacal  sign,  and  he  received  the  in- 
strument with  joy,  considering  it  a  harbinger  of 
good  luck .  He  loved  it  devotedly ,  and  often  played 
it  in  preference  to  his  Guarnerius  and  Amati. 

Giovanni  Paolo  Maggini  was  old  Gasparo's 
pupil,  and  a  very  gifted  violin  maker.  There  are 
several  fine   Magginis  in   existence,   notably  the 

[179] 


<}s>  The  Heart  of  Music  «> 

ones  which  have  been  owned  by  De  Beriot,  the 
Belgian  violinist,  by  Leonard,  Ole  Bull,  and 
Yieuxtemps.  De  Beriot  found  his  in  a  Paris 
curiosity  shop,  and  bought  it  for  fifteen  francs! 
It  was  last  reported  to  be  in  the  possession  of 
Prince  de  Ghimay. 

Maggini's  work  is  occasionally  confused  with 
that  of  Barak  Norman,  a  fine  old  English  maker, 
but  his  scroll  work  alone,  which  is  purfled  and 
highly  ornamental,  should  be  the  hallmark  of  his 
individuality  in  creation. 

Maggini  was  unusually  successful  in  a  pecuniary 
as  well  as  an  artistic  sense .  This  was  probably  due 
to  the  fact  that  he  had  the  good  sense  to  marry 
Anna  Forestro,  who  had  a  large  dowry,  and 
could  enable  her  husband  to  leave  Gasparo 
and  start  out  for  himself.  They  had  six  children, 
and  Maofo^ini  was  one  of  the  most  honoured  citizens 
in  Brescia,  as  well  as  one  of  the  most  contented 
of  householders. 

He  instituted  many  innovations  in  instrument 
making,  being  one  of  the  first  men,  for  instance, 
to  cut  his  wood  wedgeways  instead  of  in  slabs,  as 
the  old  "luthiers"  had  been  accustomed  to  do. 
But  when  he  was  only  fifty-one,  he  died  sud- 
denly and  wretchedly,  in  the  terrible  plague  that 
swept  Brescia  in  i623. 

[,8o] 


@»  The  Gray  Friar  and  Others  <®> 

His  painstaking,  unhurried  work  is  shown  not 
only  in  the  instruments  which  he  left,  but  in  the 
fact  that  in  his  entire  hfe  he  made  only  fifty  violins 
and  less  than  two  dozen  violoncellos  and  tenors. 

These  men,  while  not  the  world-hailed  masters 
of  their  craft,  were  fine  Avorkmen,  earnest  artists, 
and  true  music  lovers.  To  them,  working  in 
small  shops  and  spending  years  of  love  and 
labour  upon  their  instruments,  belongs  as  much 
credit  as  to  Stradivarius,  creating  masterpieces 
with  the  genius  that  comes  in  a  white  flame  from 
the  gods,  so  seldom  that  men  may  count  the 
occasions  of  its  coming. 

Gasparo  da  Salo,  cutting  the  heavy  wood  for 
his  big  deep-voiced  instruments,  and  working  out 
with  his  Titanic,  uncompromising  brain  the  prin- 
ciples that  a  Guarnerius  was  one  day  to  accept 
humbly;  Maggini,  toiling  for  eighteen  months 
upon  one  fiddle;  the  Gray  Friar,  sitting  from 
red  sunset  to  silver  dawn  in  his  cloister  cell, 
cutting  and  carving  by  the  light  of  a  half  burned 
taper,  or  a  primitive,  sputtering  lamp, — these 
men  had  the  touch  of  the  gods  upon  them,  after 
all ;  their  ears  were  very  close  to  the  Heart  of 
Music. 


[i8i] 


olie    (Down  of   yiolind 


*'A  Nicolas  Dolinet,  Joueur  de  Jluste  et  violon  du  diet  Sieur,  la  somme 
de  5o  livres  tournois  pour  luy  donner  moyen  d'achepter  im  Violon  de  Cremone 
pour  le  service  du  diet  Sieur.  (To  Nicolas  Dolinet,  player  of  the  flute 
and  violin  to  the  said  king  the  sum  of  fifty  livres  for  the  purchase  of  a 
viohn  of  Cremona  for  the  service  of  the  said  king.)" 

Archives  of  the  History  of  France. 


XIII. — The  Town  of  Violins 


IN  Lombardy,  where  the  silver  poplars  grow 
and  music  is  in  the  air  you  breathe  and  the  wine 
you  drink  and  the  yellow  sunlight  that  falls  upon 
you, — in  Lombardy,  fabled  and  sung  by  a 
thousand  praising  tongues,  — there  brooded  and 
hummed,  worked  and  dreamed,  a  busy,  thriving 
town  four  cienturies  ago, — the  Town  of  Violins. 
Its  name  was  Cremona,  and  the  Heart  of  Music 
was  the  heart  of  the  world  to  the  men  who  worked 
there  and  gave  their  lives  to  the  sweet  service  of 
the  lovely  growing  thing  that  was  so  surely  reach- 
ing its  meridian  of  perfection. 

On  one  side  was  the  river  Oglio,  on  another 
the  Adda ;  on  the  south  the  Po  swept  by,  blue- 
purple  under  the  warm  sky,  running  down,  down, 
down  to  where  the  Adriatic  waited  for  it.  On 
the  other  side  of  the  Po  were  Parma  and  Piacenza, 
dreaming  the  years  away  ;  one  could  cross  over 
by  a  bridge  if  one  liked.  Round  the  little  city 
were  great  walls  and  towers,  and  ditches  flooded 
with  water,  as  though  Cremona  daily  expected  a 
new  foe.  It  was  very  old,  this  Town  of  Violins, 
and  its  name,  originally  derived  from  the  Greek, 

[i85] 


OC^  The  Heart  of  Music  «x> 

meant  "Alone  upon  a  rock."  Its  cathedral 
boasted  one  hundred  and  sixty  saints,  even  four 
centuries  ago,  and  its  record  of  wars  and  sieges 
was  longer  than  that  of  Brescia. 

A  very  pretty,  happy,  Italian  city  it  was,  with  un- 
limited golden  light  splashed  upon  roof  and  street, 
the  shrill  music  of  children's  voices,  and  magical 
southern  skies  filtering  through  ' '  A  gash  in  the 
wind-grieved  Apennine"  fit  to  set  you  dreaming. 

And  this  from  the  year  i520  was  the  world's 
centre  of  violin-making,  the  Town  of  ^  iolins. 

In  the  narrow,  crooked  streets  flooded  with 
golden  sunlight  the  townspeople  might  pass  and 
repass,  the  vagrants  might  beg,  —  but  the  work  of 
violin-making  went  on.  Babies  might  be  born, 
maids  marry,  poor  folk  starve,  old  men  die,  and 
young  folks  sing,  but  behind  the  little  windows, 
amonsr  gfreen  and  violet  shadows  barred  with  the 
gold  that  struck  in  from  without,  throbbed  the 
real  pulse  of  Cremona.  For  here  the  first  great 
makers  of  Italy  sat  in  their  workshops  and  dreamed 
over  their  violins. 

Progress  is  a  curious  sort  of  giant  demonstra- 
tion of  the  law  of  supply  and  demand.  What 
we  want  or  need  usually  contrives  to  become 
invented,  and  a  dissatisfaction  with  existing  con- 
ditions is  as  certain  to  breed  improvements   as 

[i86] 


<X>  The  Town  of  Violins  <x^ 

the  struggle  of  the  butterfly  inside  of  the  cocoon 
is  bound  to  break  the  shell  as  soon  as  the  wings 
are  strong  enough  for  flight.  The  "  troubadour 
fiddles"  were  developed  from  rebecks  and  lutes 
and  guitars  and  other  primitive  instruments 
because  the  romantic  minstrels  desired  a  fuller 
tone  to  support  their  lyrical  efforts  when  they  were 
singing  songs  to  obdurate  ladies.  The  smaller 
violins  of  Tieffenbriicker  and  the  Gray  Friar  and 
the  rest  of  the  pioneers  were  the  outcome  of  a 
growing  discontent  with  the  cumbrous,  heavy,  in- 
convenient bow  instruments  of  their  day.  So  the 
full-toned,  delicate,  perfectly  balanced  violins  of 
Cremona  were  made  to  fit  a  surging  demand  for 
instruments  more  sensitive  and  responsive,  more 
warmly  flexible  in  tone,  and  better  adapted  to  a 
long,  varying  gamut  of  musical  expressions. 
And,  like  most  fresh  stages  of  evolution,  the 
most  radical  changes  in  violin-making  come  from 
without.  It  was  less  the  makers  than  the  musi- 
cians who  created  the  new  instrument  through 
their  inability  to  get  desired  effects  upon  the 
old. 

Violins  were  more  and  more  used  each  year 
in  orchestras.  In  i565  Francesco  di  Bcrnado 
Gorteccia,  of  Arezzo,  wrote  an  intermezzo,  with 
the  help  of  the  musician  Striggio,  in  honour  of 

[187] 


«>  The  Heart  of  Music  <m> 

the  marriage  of  Joanna  of  Austria  with  Francesco 
de'  Medici,  and  introduced  four  "vioHni,"  one 
"basso  di  viola,"  one  "soprano  di  viola,"  and 
one  "viola  d'arco."  The  effect  was  rich  and 
musical,  but  utterly  lacking  in  brilliancy,  and  the 
"  violini,"  or  smaller  violins,  were  too  piercing  to 
be  entirely  pleasant.  How  far  the  efforts  of  these 
and  contemporary  composers  may  have  influenced 
Andrea  Amati  and  his  two  sons  in  their  work  it 
is  hard  to  say,  but  it  may  safely  be  stated  that 
Nicolo  Amati's  violins  were  directly  an  outcome 
of  the  musical  ambitions  of  Claudio  Monteverde. 

This  brilliant  composer  was  born  in  Cremona  in 
the  year  1 568 .  He  thus  knew  all  the  Amati  violin 
makers,  though  while  he  was  still  quite  a  little 
boy  of  nine  or  ten  years  old  Andrea  died.  The 
brothers  Antonio  and  Geronimo  were  fifteen  and 
eighteen  years  older  than  he,  and  took  an  interest 
in  the  gifted  lad.  He  early  imbibed  the  passion- 
ate worship  of  the  violin,  which  flooded  all 
Cremona,  and  while  still  very  young  entered  the 
service  of  the  Duke  of  Mantua  as  a  violist.  There 
he  was  taught  to  play  by  the  Maestro  di  Capella, 
Marc  Antonio  Ignegneri,  and  incidentally  learned 
composition  as  well.  This  last  was  to  be  his  life- 
work,  though  he  never  took  the  trouble  to  write 
correctly   or  harmonically  and  was  more  inter- 

[i88] 


<©;>  The  Town  of  Violins  «» 

ested  in  grace  of  melody  and  dramatic  effect  than 
in  scientific  accuracy. 

Above  all  he  loved  orchestration,  and  he  was 
the  first  to  really  utilise  the  dramatic  possibilities 
of  the  violin.  It  w^as  in  this  way  that  the  short- 
comings of  the  instrument  became  conspicuous, 
and  that  Nicolo  Amati,  now  growing  up  into  his 
long  and  splendid  career,  came  to  create  violins 
that  could  be  used  for  such  purposes  as  Monte- 
verde  and  other  composers  desired.  All  Italy 
was  joined  in  a  great  contest  as  to  what  maker 
could  produce  the  violin  which  might  satisfy 
Monteverde.  The  compass  of  the  instrument  had 
to  be  enlarged,  and  the  quality  of  tone  aug- 
mented ;  sound-holes  were  made  curved  instead 
of  straight,  the  tension  of  woods  was  heightened 
— the  entire  instrument  underwent  a  vivifying 
change. 

The  following  story,  for  the  truth  of  which  we 
cannot  vouch,  seems  to  indicate  that  Monte- 
verde had  inspirations  in  regard  to  the  requisites 
of  the  bow  also.  The  rather  heavy,  unwieldy 
bow  was  still  in  use  then,  of  course.  One  day, 
so  the  tale  goes,  Monteverde  was  rehearsing  his 
"  Combattimento  di  Tancredi  e  Clorinda."  He 
had  written  a  very  eficctive  passage  to  be  played 
as  Tancredi  wounds  Clorinda,  whom  he  loves  but 

[189] 


@X^  The  Heart  of  Music  «^ 

does  not  recognise,  a  passage  involving  a  tremolo 
on  the  violin  strings.  The  musicians  tried  in 
vain  to  get  the  trill,  but  their  bow^s  w^ere  heavy 
and  consequently  clumsy,  and  they  only  succeeded 
in  annoying  Monteverde  to  the  point  of  frenzy. 
For  as  long  as  possible  he  endured  the  torture, 
then  springing  upon  the  unfortunate  violinist  who 
sat  nearest  he  seized  his  bow  and  belaboured  him 
with  it  till  it  broke  short  off  at  the  end,  when  he 
flung  it  at  him  and  paced  up  and  down  fuming. 
When  his  rage  was  somewhat  calmed  he  com- 
manded the  orchestra  to  play  again.  The  miserable 
wretch  who  had  been  beaten  protested,  stammer- 
ing that  he  could  not  play  w  ith  a  broken  bow . 

' '  You  can  play  just  as  well  with  a  broken  bow  as 
an  unbroken  one  1  "  retorted  Monteverde,  angrily. 

The  man  hastily  tied  his  bow  hairs  onto  the 
shortened  end  and  began  to  play  with  the  other. 
After  a  moment  Monteverde  raised  his  hand, 
stopped  the  entire  orchestra,  and  ordered  him  to 
play  alone.  The  man  did  so,  shaking  with  fear. 
Monteverde  rushed  to  him,  rubbing  his  hands 
with  delight : 

"  You  have  it!  "  he  exclaimed.  "  The  broken 
bow  served  you  well,  my  friend." 

The  loss  of  the  weight  in  the  bow  had  made  it 
so  much  more  manageable  that  the  musician  had 

[190] 


<<^  The  Town  of  Violins  OC» 

been  able  to  execute  the  tremolo  with  much 
greater  ease  than  the  others! 

This  story  is  difhcult  to  credit  for  the  reason 
that  we  know  the  bow  did  not  reach  its  full  de- 
velopment for  another  century,  and  that  when  it 
did  gain  perfection  it  was  not  short,  but  long  and 
slender,  and  finely  balanced,  as  the  poor  musi- 
cian's broken  stick  could  not  have  been. 

The  tale,  however  true  or  false,  is  undoubtedly 
significant  in  its  portrayal  of  Monteverde  as  an 
experimenter,  an  explorer  in  the  fields  of  instru- 
mental music.  His  services  to  the  violin  and  its 
evolution  were  numerous  and  incalculable,  and 
his  name  should  be  one  of  the  most  honoured 
that  ever  were  connected  with  Cremona. 

Between  the  years  i520  and  162 5  was  born 
Andrea  Amati,  destined  to  be  the  founder  of  the 
famous  violin-making  house  of  Cremona.  The 
Casa  Amati  had  long  been  one  of  the  noblest 
families  in  the  town,  and  more  than  one  of  its 
sons  had  achieved  distinction  in  one  way  and 
another;  but  Andrea  was  the  first  of  them,  known 
to  history,  to  give  up  his  life  to  the  designing  and 
fashioning  of  violins. 

When  he  was  between  twenty  and  twenty-five 
he  made  a  rebeck  with  three  strings,  which  is 
still  in  existence  ;  a  few  years  later  he  finished 


<®:>   The  Heart  of  Music  <^> 

a  viola  bastardo,  or  small  violin  ;  a  few^  years 
later  still  he  made  some  marvellous  specimens  of 
the  viola  di  gamba,  the  tenor,  and  the  violoncello, 
and  in  his  last  years  achieved  some  beautiful  violins 
of  pure  form  and  exquisite  tone.  This  record 
alone  is  enough  to  show  the  extraordinary  gift  of 
the  man,  the  marvellous  development  of  which  his 
rarely  elastic  talent  was  capable,  and  the  peculiarly 
progressive  genius  which  made  all  the  men  of 
his  house  reach  such  high  achievements  in  such 
swift  strides.  His  instruments  were  finely  finished 
and  except  for  a  certain  angularity  in  the  sound- 
holes,  and  an  unresonant  height  of  the  belly, 
showed  a  vast  improvement  upon  the  older  Bres- 
cian  violin.  Probably  his  master  was  Gasparo  da 
Salo,  or  Maggini,  though  this  is  not  certain.  In 
any  case,  his  workmanship  is  far  more  advanced 
than  theirs,  and  many  little  tricks  of  manufac- 
ture seem  to  be  entirely  peculiar  to  himself.  He 
died  in   iSyy. 

The  old  French  record  previously  quoted  says 
that  Charles  IX  authorised  Dolinet  to  buy  one 
Cremona  violin,  but  it  is  authoritatively  stated 
elsewhere  that  the  king  ordered  from  Amati  not 
one  but  twelve  violins,  as  w^ell  as  six  tenors 
and  six  violoncellos,  for  the  royal  private  band. 
The  report  concerning  the  number  bought  varies 

[192] 


®v»  The  Town  of  Violins  «^* 

curiously.  One  chronicle  records  the  purchase 
of  twenty-four  violins  instead  of  twelve. 

A  curious  mistake  seems  to  have  been  made 
concerning  this  very  order.  It  is  usually  beheved 
to  have  been  sent  to  Nicolo  Amati,  the  grandson 
of  Andrea.  As  a  matter  of  fact  that  would  have 
been  a  manifest  impossibility  if  the  command 
was  that  of  Charles  IX. 

On  the  back  of  each  instrument  made  by  Amati 
to  fill  the  king's  order  were  the  arms  of  France 
and  the  motto  ' '  Pietate  et  Justitia  (Piety  and  Jus- 
tice) " —  singular  irony  for  Charles  IX. 

Andrea's  younger  brother,  Nicolo,  was  less 
renowned,  his  chief  distinction  lying  in  the  full- 
toned  and  well-made  double  basses  which  he  left 
behind  him. 

Andrea's  sons,  Antonio  and  Geronimo,  did 
not  step  very  much  farther  either.  They  were 
fine  workmen,  but  could  not  boast  the  genius  of 
their  father.  Their  most  valuable  work  was  that 
which  could  best  be  styled  decorative;  their  scrolls 
were  graceful  and  showed  enormous  variety,  and 
their  varnish  was  of  a  most  lovely  dark  orange 
tint.  The  forms  of  their  instruments  were  really 
beautiful  and  their  purfling  the  work  of  artists. 

There  is,  by  the  way,  a  mystery  about  the 
brothers  Amati.     According  to  the  record  of  their 

[193] 


®V>  The  Heart  of  Music  K^ 

lives  and  achievements  they  must  have  lived  one 
hundred  and  forty-eight  years  each.  Either  they 
are  credited  w^ith  many  more  instruments  and 
many  more  incidents  than  they  had,  or  there 
w^ere  tw^o  pairs  of  them,  at  least,  or  they  broke 
all  records  in  regard  to  age  and  energy. 

Geronimo  was  the  more  original  of  the  two, 
and  struck  out  in  an  independent  line,  making 
peculiarly  large,  heavy  violins  by  way  of  experi- 
menting in  tone  volume.  Still  he  never  did  as 
uniformly  fine  work  in  this  individual  violin- 
making  as  when  he  worked  with  Antonio,  who, 
while  he  lacked  a  certain  pioneering  boldness 
characteristic  of  his  elder  brother,  was  perhaps 
the  more  painstaking  craftsman  of  the  two. 

It  was,  as  a  matter  of  course,  Geronimo  who 
set  the  whole  Amati  family  and  half  of  Cremona 
in  turmoil  by  his  headlong  love  affair  with  Mada- 
lina  di  Lattazini,  a  lady  of  high  birth  and  violent 
temper.  With  a  thousand  reasons  on  both  sides 
w^hy  they  should  not  marry,  the  mad  pair  ended 
their  extended  contributions  to  Cremona  scandals 
by  eloping  and  coming  back  most  anticlimati- 
cally  wedded. 
- —  It  was  their  son,  Nicolo,  who  was  to  carry  the 
name  of  Amati  to  its  greatest  height.  He  was 
born   on    September   3,    1696,    and  died  August 

[194] 


<w>  The  Town  of  Violins  ^» 

12,    i68/i,  after  a  long  and  honourable  artistic 
career.      Although  he  departed  in  few  particulars 
from  the  admirable  models  of  his  house,  he  im- 
proved upon  them  in  every  smallest  detail.      The 
Amati   makers,    before   this   second   Nicolo,    had 
been,  more  or  less,  follov\^ers  of  Gasparo  da  Sal6, 
Maggini,  Zanetto,  and  others  of  the  old  Brescian 
school.      They  excelled  chiiefly  in  instruments  of 
a   deep,    heavy  tone,    like  the  viola    di    gamba, 
viola  d'amore,  the  tenor,  violoncello,  and  double 
bass.      Nicolo   Amati   confined  his   most   serious 
efforts   to   the   violino    bastardo,    and    the    small 
violin, — practically  the  size  and   style   of  what 
we    have    to-day.      He    made    enormous    strides 
in  the  knowledge  of  woods,    and  the  desirable 
thickness  of  them;    in  the  requisite  proportions 
of  back  and  belly,  and  is  said  to  have  invented 
certain   varnishes   of  peculiar  value.      His   large 
violins— the  "Grand  Amatis,"  as   they    are 
tnown  —  are    considered   treasures   by  connois- 
seurs.      In   them   he    imprisoned    the    sweetest 
sounds   that  the   world    had    heard    up    to    that 

time. 

Nicolo's  son,  Geronimo,  was  the  least  gifted  of 
all  the  Amati  makers;  apprenticed  to  the  master, 
he  never  could  learn  the  deft  touch  that  made  the 
instrument  sweet  in  tone  and  fine  in  form.     This 

[^95] 


<:0  The  Heart  of  Music  «^ 

untalented  Geronimo  was  a  rarely  fortunate  youth, 
had  he  but  known  it,  for  he  not  only  had  Nicolo 
Amati  for  father  and  master,  but  he  had  for 
fellow-students  Andrea  Guarneri  and  Antonio 
Stradivari ! 

The  entrance  of  an  old  Italian  family  into  trade, 
which  in  those  days  was  held  in  scarcely  higher 
esteem  than  that  of  a  common  mechanic  or  artisan, 
has  a  peculiar  interest.  That  Andrea  should  have 
first  had  the  courage  to  apprentice  himself  to  a 
man  whom  his  world  considered  an  ordinary 
craftsman,  a  man  almost  certainly  of  inferior  birth, 
however  superior  his  attainments,  marks  a  curious 
leap  upward  in  the  dignity  of  the  art  of  music. 
The  violin  was  at  last  becoming  something  beau- 
tiful, rare,  valued,  cherished;  men  had  begun  to 
study  its  sweetness  and  lovely  possibilities ;  it  was 
no  longer  an  instrument  of  gay,  cheap  destinies, 
but  a  thing  of  art  to  which  the  house  of  Amati 
could  give  up  its  generations  in  all  dignity. 

Among  the  more  illustrious  of  the  names  which 
we  find  among  Nicolo  Amati' s  apprentices  and 
pupils  is  that  of  Mathias  Albani  the  second,  son 
of  the  Albani  of  Botzen  who  studied  with  Jacob 
Stainer.  The  young  Albani  was  a  very  fine  maker 
and  learned  his  great  master's  methods  so  well 
that  many  persons  have  declared  his  instruments 

[196] 


®»  The  Town  of  Violins  ®» 

in  no  way  inferior  to  Amati's.  This  is  probably 
an  exaggeration  due  to  enthusiasm,  for  the  Albani 
violins,  while  beautifully  made  and  of  extraordi- 
narily powerful  tone,  lack  the  sweetness  of  the 
Maestro's  instruments. 

Albani,  like  Marcus  Stainer  and  many  other 
makers,  gave  particular  attention  to  his  varnish. 
His  violins,  which  were  made  with  very  high, 
curving  bellies,  to  throw  the  sound  out  in  a  heavy 
volume,  were  covered  with  deep  red  varnish  that 
in  some  lights  looked  brown  and  in  others  purple. 
His  son,  Avho  was  a  violin  maker  also,  settled  in 
Palermo  and  achieved  very  little  fame,  preferring 
to  model  his  instruments  upon  the  patterns  of  the 
old  German  makers. 

Paolo  Grancino,  of  Milan,  was  another  of 
Nicolo  Amati's  pupils.  He  was  one  of  those 
peculiar  temperaments  which,  with  earnest  am- 
bition and  unrivalled  advantages,  just  fail  in  their 
endeavours.  He  lived  long  in  Cremona,  and 
worked  and  studied  faithfully,  but  "he  never," 
says  his  chronicler,  "  achieved  other  than  second 
rank." 

Among  the  most  brilliant  names  associated  with 
Cremona  is  that  of  Ruggieri.  Francesco 
Ruggieri,  known  as  ' '  Feranceso  il  Per  (Francesco, 
the  Father),"  came  from  Brescia  originally,  where 

[197] 


<K®  The  Heart  of  Music  «©>:> 

he  had  learned  his  trade,  it  is  said,  from  Pereghno 
Zanetto.  He  had  two  sons,  Giovanni  Battista  and 
Pietro.  The  former  was  the  shining  Kght  of  the 
family.  He  was  called  "  Giovanni  il  Buono  (the 
Good),"  and  worked  for  many  years  under  Nicolo 
Amati,  in  Cremona.  He  made  violins  of  such 
excellence  that  wily  dealers  often  have  been  able 
to  palm  them  off  as  genuine  Amatis.  It  may  in- 
cidentally be  mentioped  here  that  the  most  famous 
violin  makers  of  Cremona,  following  the  era  of 
Amati,  Stradivari,  and  Guarneri,  were  Carlo 
Bergonzi,  who  was  a  pupil  of  Stradavari,  copied 
him  closely,  and  by  many  persons  is  ranked 
directly  after  him;  the  family  of  GuadiguinI, 
famous  for  their  red  varnish,  sometimes  crim- 
son, sometimes  vivid  vermilion;  also  Monta- 
gnana,  Storione,  and  Testore,  who  were  less 
distinguished. 

The  value  of  the  Nicolo  Amati  violins  is  very 
great,  though  of  course  much  less  than  some 
Guarnerices  and  all  Stradivari  instruments.  The 
smaller  models  cost  only  from  eighty  to  a  hundred 
pounds,  but  the  '  'Grand  Amatis  "  are  worth  at  least 
two  hundred  pounds.  The  one  belonging  to  Mr. 
Betts,  in  England,  was  valued  at  two  hundred 
and  fifty  pounds,  and  Sir  William  Autis'  in- 
strument, an  exceptionally  fine  one,  was  put  on 

[198] 


<5s>  The  Town  of  Violins  #» 

auction  for  one  hundred  and  iifty  guineas,  and 
brought  one  hundred  and  eighty. 

The  men  who  were  privileged  to  work  with 
the  Maestro  Amati  worshipped  him  so  bhiidly  tliat 
they  were  as  ready  to  copy  his  mannerisms  as  they 
were  his  great  quaHties.  They  travelled  away  to 
their  several  cities  and  tried  to  imitate  Nicolo's 
every  gesture  in  stirring  varnish  or  inserting 
purfling.  "  Thus  did  the  Master,"  they  would 
say  and  were  surprised  when  they  failed  to  emit 
the  magic  tone  of  his  instruments. 

But  it  was  not  only  his  apprentices  and  pupils 
who  imitated  him,  but  the  whole  violin-making 
world  for  a  time.  Directly  or  indirectly  all  the 
great  names  of  the  art  owe  a  portion  of  their  lustre 
to  some  fine  glimmers  of  initial  incentive  or  primal 
creation  of  the  house  of  Amati. 


[199] 


^ke  0ong  of  the  Joine 


Then  fast  climbs  up  the  Master 
That  ivy  case  so  sheer. 

And  to  the  bark  yet  faster 
Lays  anxiously  his  ear. 

■  And  taps  it  with  his  hammer, 
In  mingled  hope  and  fear. 

As  tapped  he  at  her  chamber. 
His  lady-love  so  dear. 


Now  shalt  thou  fully  prove  it, 

O  youngest  born  of  mine, 
What  song  —  to  those  who  love  it  — 
Hides  in  our  Northern  pine  !  " 

"  Stainer  "  by  Hermann  von  Gilm. 
Translation  by  "  L.  B." 


XIV.  —  The  Song  of  the  Pine 


/\M0NG  those  who  followed  in  the  pathway  of 
Tieffenbriicker  were  the  brothers  Stainer  —  Jacob 
and  Marcus.  It  is  not  certain  that  they  were 
apprenticed  to  or  taught  by  the  Tieffenbriickcr 
family,  but  it  is  so  stated  in  more  than  one 
chronicle.  They  lived  in  Absom,  a  village  less 
than  a  mile  from  Innsbruck,  and  are  known  to 
have  studied  viol-making  from  a  family  of 
"  Lautenmacher  (Lute  Makers)"  at  Innsbruck. 
Jacob,  born  July  i4,  162 1,  the  older  and  more 
talented  of  the  two,  made  very  wonderful  instru- 
ments of  all  kinds,  but  is  less  well  known  by 
persons  generally  than  many  less  eminent  violin 
makers. 

Although  he  studied  with  Nicolo  Amati,  in  all 
probability,  and  certainly  worked  in  Italy  for 
some  time,  his  place  belongs  among  the  lute 
makers  of  Tyrol,  so  justly  famous  for  their  ex- 
quisite mechanical  sense  in  musical  manufacture 
as  well  as  for  their  many  radical  explorers  in  new 
and  fertile  fields  of  music. 

His  parents  were  Martin  Stainer  and  Sabine  Gra- 
finger,  and  like  so  many  of  the  early  instrument 

[2o3] 


<X>  The  Heart  of  Music  <m>. 

makers,  especially  in  the  North,  the  family  was 
one  of  mechanics.  The  elder  Stainer  was  a 
carpenter,  and  the  oldest  brother,  Paul,  a  master- 
joiner.  The  two  younger  boys,  with  their  eager 
interest  in  music,  and  remarkable  musical  ears, 
were  a  never-ending  source  of  amazement  and 
even  consternation  to  their  people.  There  was 
something  disconcerting  in  this  passion  for  a  trade, 
—  or  so  Paul  and  his  father  thought.  Were  the 
lads  mad,  that  they  spent  good  hours  testing  the 
sound  of  a  piece  of  wood,  and  crying  out  with 
delight  when  apparently  they  were  satisfied  ? 

Of  the  two,  Jacob  was  undoubtedly  the  madder, 
as  will  very  quickly  be  discovered.  They  say 
that  he  had  seen  violins  already  ;  the  German 
Electors  loved  music,  and  the  Tyrolean  towns 
were  full  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  instruments, 
introduced  through  the  Court,  as  well  as  by  the 
inevitable  strolling  players.  Whenever  Jacob  saw 
a  viol  of  more  than  usually  delicate  proportions, 
he  paused  to  study  it  silently.  Says  one  writer  : 
"  He  thought  and  thought,  and  worked  and 
worked,  and  thus  created  the  German  violin." 
Doubtless  ;  but  there  were  intervening  distances 
to  be  crossed  first. 

His  passion  for  music  finally  decided  his  father 
to  turn  it  to  practical  account.      There   was  an 

[204] 


«>  The  Song  of  the  Pine  <0 

organ  builder  in  Innsbruck,  with  name,  fame, 
and  a  prosperous  list  of  patrons.  To  this  organ 
builder,  whose  name  remains  \Yra[)pcd  in  obscu- 
rity, Jacob  was  apprenticed.  He  was  a  fragile 
lad,  full  of  dreams,  and  as  sensitive  as  one  of 
the  fiddles  he  was  later  to  make.  The  massive 
and  titantic  character  of  the  work  he  was  now 
obliged  to  do  was  as  uncongenial  to  his  detail- 
loving  soul  as  it  was  injurious  to  his  delicate 
body. 

He  wanted  to  bend  over  fine,  silken  wood,  to 
fashion  it  deftly,  dexterously,  into  beautiful  forms, 
and  to  give  those  forms  sweet  voices  that  could 
charm  away  the  melancholy  which  often  seized 
him.  The  finer,  tenderer,  more  concentrated 
styles  of  art  were  what  found  an  echo  in  his  heart. 
He  shrank  with  jangled  nerves  from  the  first 
mighty  boom  of  each  huge  instrument  he  had  been 
obliged  to  assist  in  making.  His  head  ached  with 
the  distressing  bigness  of  the  thing,  even  as  his 
bones  and  muscles  ached  with  the  unwonted  and 
extreme  strain  put  upon  them  in  his  manual  work 
each  day.  He  grew  monthly  more  slender,  more 
nervous,  more  obviously  a  creature  of  spirit  and 
visions,  rather  than  mere  heavy  flesh.  The  work 
told  cruelly  upon  him,  bending  his  slight  shoul- 
ders, and  painting  unwarranted  lines  in  his  face. 

[205  ] 


<»>  The  Heart  of  Music  ^X> 

Yet  still  the  bitterest  part  of  it  all  was  his  thwarted 
ambition. 

For  the  secret  was  this:  somewhere,  somehow, 
he  had  seen  an  Amati  violin .  Perhaps  some  patron 
of  that  very  organ  builder  had  taken  an  interest 
in  the  pale  apprentice,  and  asked  him  to  his  house 
where  the  marvel  had  been  displayed.  But  con- 
cerning that  we  cannot  know  the  facts.  Suffice 
it  to  say  that  the  wonder  of  that  one  violin,  how- 
ever seen,  saturated  his  whole  brain  until  it  resolved 
itself  into  a  spur,  a  goal,  a  guiding  star,  and  a 
daily  torment,  —  all  in  one.  Overworked  as  he 
was,  he  began  to  take  lessons  secretly  from  a 
family  of  lute  makers  in  the  city.  As  has  already 
been  said,  these  may  or  may  not  have  been  the 
house  of  TiefFenbrticker;  evidence  points  to  their 
having  been,  however,  and  it  would  explain  many 
curious  little  similarities  in  Stainer's  work  to  that 
of  the  earlier  Tyrolean  master, — similarities 
which  persist  even  in  his  later  and  more  advanced 
creations. 

Marcus  Stainer  seems  to  have  studied  with  these 
same  "  Lautenmacher,"  though  how  he  contrived 
to  get  to  Innsbruck  for  the  purpose  we  do  not 
know.  It  would,  however,  be  a  far  simpler  matter 
for  him  than  for  his  brother,  for  Marcus  early 
learned  the  value  of  being  what  some  people  call 

[206] 


«>  The  Song  of  the  Pine  ®» 

deceitful,  and  others  politic,  and  till  the  day  of 
his  death,  managed  to  steal  what  he  wanted  if  he 
could  not  get  it  given  him. 

So  now  picture  Jacob  working  by  day  at  his 
abhorred  organ-building,  and  by  night  at  his  be- 
loved viol-making,  his  eyes  growing  bigger,  and 
his  body  smaller,  with  an  almost  visible  increase 
and  decrease.  At  last  the  inevitable  happened. 
One  night  —  a  night  shot  through  and  through 
with  midsummer  madness  —  Jacob  ran  away. 

One  sympathetic  friend  Jacob  had, — a  friend 
who  appreciated  the  peculiarly  unendurable  ele- 
ments in  his  wretchedness, — the  parish  priest. 
This  man,  nameless  to  us,  but  forever  remarkable 
through  association,  was  the  one  helpful  soul 
who  had  the  good  sense  and  comprehending  sym- 
pathy necessary  to  encourage  our  poor,  starved 
Jacob.  When  the  inevitable  happened,  it  was  this 
same  parish  priest  who  planned,  and  arranged,  and 
helped,  and  who  even  proclaimed  himself  willing 
to  shoulder  all  subsequent  censure. 

He  went  to  Italy  as  straight  as  he  could, 
enduring  privations  and  hardships  on  the  way, 
but  glorying  in  his  new  freedom,  and  in  the 
nearness  of  his  desires.  To  Cremona  he 
journeyed,  —  he  knew  quite  well  where  to  go,  — 
and  presented  himself  at  the  workshop  of  Nicolo 

[207] 


<K3©  The  Heart  of  Music  <K^ 

Amati.  The  master  consented  to  test  his  abihty, 
and  in  an  incredibly  short  time  afterward,  Jacob 
was  installed  in  the  Amati  household,  and  became 
the  right-hand  man  of  Nicolo.  The  older  man 
recognised  the  young  Tyrolese's  genius,  and 
fostered  it  in  every  way  possible;  and  Jacob  for 
a  brief  time  was  happy.  He  was  between 
eighteen  and  twenty  then,  and  the  master  a  little 
over  forty. 

This  golden  period,  however,  was  doomed  to 
a  hasty  end.  Amati  had  a  daughter,  whose  name 
we  do  not  know,  but  who  was  the  joy  of  his 
heart,  and  the  object  of  his  deepest  concern,  — 
after  his  violins.  He  wished  to  marry  her  to 
Stainer,  thus  providing  her  with  a  charming 
husband  and  himself  with  a  talented  assistant. 
The  girl  seemed  content  with  the  arrangement; 
not  so  Jacob.  At  the  first  dreadful  suggestion 
the  lad  was  aghast,  and  at  the  second,  he  basely 
fled.  Not  even  the  tutelage  of  the  Maestro  Amati 
could  reconcile  him  to  marriage  at  that  time  ! 

He  escaped  to  Venice,  and  went  to  the  master 
Pietro  Yinercati,  at  that  time  the  most  eminent 
of  Venetian  instrument  makers.  He  worked 
there  for  a  time,  but  soon  grew  homesick  for  his 
Northern  hills  and  streams,  and  decided  to  leave 
Italy.     He  had  been  away  a  little  more  than  three 

[208] 


«®  The  Song  of  the  Phie  «x> 

years,  and  already  had  become  desperately  tired 
of  hot  blue  skies  and  eternally  yellow  sunshine. 

The  sleepy  canals,  and  the  lazy  songs  that 
drifted  over  them  through  orange  afternoons, 
and  violet  twilights,  and  black  and  silver  nights, 
wearied  his  senses.  As  he  worked  in  Yinercati's 
shop,  he  could  close  his  eyes  and  smell,  above 
the  heavy  scent  of  Southern  flowers  being  carried 
past  under  the  narrow  window,  the  new,  sweet 
savour  of  the  wind-shaken  pines  in  the  North. 
The  houses  opposite,  with  window-ledges  where 
yellow  blossoms  burned,  and  girls  leaned  laugh- 
ing, swam  in  a  mist  whereon  were  sketched  the 
glittering  peaks  of  Tyrol,  diamond  white  against 
a  cold,  pale  Northern  sky. 

So,  at  twenty,  with  his  craft  already  learned, 
Jacob  Stainer  turned  his  back  upon  the  spell  of 
musical  Italy,  and  went  home  to  Absom. 

He  settled  down  humbly  there,  thankful  to  be 
at  home  again,  and  willing  to  accept  the  very 
smallest  and  most  inconsiderable  trade.  hi  his 
tiny  Absom  shop  violins  were  to  be  bought  for 
six  gulden  each,  and  he  had  studied  with  Amati 
and  \  inercati ! 

About  this  time  he  fell  in  love,  —  or  perhaps 
there  was  some  old  memory,  some  tender  associ- 
ation or  sentiment,  at  the  back  of  it.      Be  that  as 

[209] 


«»  The  Heart  of  Music  «» 

it  may,  he  was  not  quite  twenty-four  when  he 
married  Margarethe  Holzhammer,  November 
26,  i6/i5.  This,  at  all  events,  was  a  love  match, 
for  Margarethe  —  or  Grethel  —  had  not  one  pfen- 
nig of  her  own,  and  Avas  not  yet  nineteen.  And  as 
for  Jacob  —  he  never  had  any  money,  even  when 
he  permitted  himself  to  fall  a  victim,  though  a 
contented  and  happy  one,  to  matrimony. 

The  harmony  and  sympathy  between  the  two 
is  indicated  in  the  eight  marvellously  beautiful 
daughters  of  whom  they  were  the  parents.  None 
of  these  girls  attained  extraordinary  distinction, 
so  far  as  the  erratic  and  erroneous  public  may  be 
considered,  but  all  of  them  were  lovely  in  mind 
and  body,  and  achieved  their  destiny  as  sweet 
and  wholesome  women. 

Six  gulden  apiece  for  his  carefully  made  fiddles 
totalled  but  an  insufficient  income,  all  told.  And 
Jacob,  his  pride  notwithstanding,  was  forced,  for 
his  wife's  sake,  and  his  children's,  to  accept  the 
shelter  of  the  parental  Holzhammer  roof,  at  least 
temporarily. 

Jacob  had  less  idea  of  the  value  of  money  even 
than  most  musical  persons.  He  spent  cheerfully 
and  generously,  and  paid  as  cheerfully  and  as 
generously  when  he  had  the  wherewithal.  When 
he  did  not  have  it,  he  felt  it  to  be  something  in 

[210] 


«C^>  The  Song  of  the  Pine  «® 

the  nature  of  a  personal  aflPront  from  destiny,  an 
unnecessary  and  rather  humihating  condition,  for 
which  everything  and  everybody  except  himself 
must  be  to  blame. 

In  1 658  he  was  made  an  archducal  retainer, 
in  the  service  of  the  Archduke  Leopold  of  Austria. 
This  was  all  very  well,  but  bis  debts  remained 
unpaid.  With  Grethel  and  the  babies,  he  con- 
trived to  reach  KirchdorfF,  in  Austria,  where  in 
the  vain  effort  to  borrow  money  for  the  liquidation 
of  his  many  accounts,  he  fell  hopelessly  into  the 
clutches  of  the  usurer,  Solomon  Htibner.  This 
clever  Jew  merchant  fed  on  all  such  foolish  stuff 
as  was  represented  by  Jacob  Stainer  and  his  ilk. 
The  method  might  be  slow,  but  it  was  hideously 
sure;  and  the  Stainer  family  were  soon,  bodies 
and  souls,  in  the  grip  of  Hiibner. 

Providentially,  in  1669,  the  emperor  appointed 
Jacob  to  the  post  of  violin  maker  of  the  Court. 
This  new  position  fired  Stainer  with  new  energy 
and  hope.  He  began  to  make  more  and  more 
exquisitely  finished  violins,  calling  upon  his  Vene- 
tian studies  to  supply  him  with  rare  and  effective 
kinds  of  varnish,  and  inventing  star-shaped  sound- 
holes,  and  elaborately  ornamented  scrolls,  by  way 
of  variations.  He  took  a  house  opposite  Krupp 
Castle,    and  devoted  his   every  waking  moment 

[2,,] 


«^  The  Heart  of  Music  <» 

to  the  perfection  of  his  ideal,  —  the  German 
viohn.  The  linden  trees  rustled  all  about  him, 
and  the  castle  splendours  glowered  over  the  way; 
still  and  forever  he  worked  and  dreamed  over  his 
violins. 

When  Leopold  died  and  the  Archduke  Sigis- 
mund  came  into  power,  music  and  musicians  were 
banished  from  the  Austrian  Court.  Even  the 
emperor  abandoned  him,  and  Stainer,  who  once 
more  could  not  pay  his  debts,  was  thrown  into 
prison.  When  he  emerged,  his  brain,  always 
sensitive  and  curiously  balanced,  had  become 
permanently  impaired. 

Jacob  Stainer  lived  a  strange  and  erratic  life, 
like  most  men  whose  lots  take  them  close  to  any 
form  of  emotional  art,  even  if  it  be  viewed  from 
the  least  emotional  standpoint.  In  all  his  varied 
phases  of  experience,  he  worked  untiringly,  and 
dreamed  of  the  perfect  violin,  even  as  Tieffen- 
briicker  had  dreamed. 

In  Stainer  was  developed  a  miraculous  sense  of 
pitch.  He  could  test  wood  by  his  ear  alone, 
when  choosing  the  materials  for  his  violins;  he 
never  thought  of  applying  any  test  other  than  his 
own  keen  and  unerring  sense  of  sound  values. 
He  used  to  wander  through  the  woods  of  Hasel- 
fichte,  on  the  hills  of  Lafatsch  and  Gleirsch,  and 

[212] 


^sQ©  The  Song  of  the  Pine  <:«Ce» 

strike  the  various  tree-trunks  with  a  small  hammer. 
This  was,  of  course,  his  unfailing  test  for  wood- 
fitness,  but  often,  without  a  hammer,  he  would 
listen  to  the  fall  of  the  trees  felled  by  the  regular 
forest  woodcutters,  and  note  the  pitch  or  tone  to 
which  they  fell.  In  this  way  he  decided  upon 
the  wood  for  his  next  instruments.  He  was  a 
man  of  fantastic  imagination  and  eccentric  talent; 
and  his  life  was  made  up  of  erraticisms  and 
vagaries. 

The  poem  of  Von  Gilm,  while  crude  and 
rough  in  its  translation,  is  not  without  its  effective 
passages  in  the  original  ;  notably  the  part  in 
which  Stainer  cries  : 

••  As  swan  —  as  swan  —  she's  singing, 
Though  pierced  to  the  heart  1  " 

The  inherent  vocality  of  the  passive  wood  is 
rather  remarkably  described  in  this  simple  little 
example  of  verse-making  ;  and  the  idea  is  full  of 
poetry,  voicing  as  it  does,  the  essential  spirit 
of  music  enclosed  in  the  pine  tree  of  the  North. 
This  spirit  of  music,  vagrant  or  specific,  abstract 
or  poetical,  — a  spirit  incarnate  in  all  its  diverse, 
enigmatical  forms,  — we  discover  in  the  work  of 
Jacob  Stainer. 

It  is  not  strange  to  find  that  in  his  last  years 
his  highly  strained  and  inventive  brain  snapped 

[.,3] 


<^>  The  Heart  of  Music  ®» 

suddenly,  even  as  a  violin  string  drawn  too  tight, 
or  left  exposed  to  the  wrong  atmospheric  condi- 
tions. When  he  was  about  sixty  years  old,  he 
went  quite  mad,  and  lived  until  his  death,  three 
years  later,  in  his  house  at  Absom,  spending  all 
the  clear  days  in  the  garden,  chained  to  a  wooden 
bench,  with  the  sounds  of  birds  about  him  and 
the  broken  dreams  of  perfect  violins  in  his  heart. 
It  is  not  hard  to  picture  him  sitting  there,  — the 
wooden  bench  is  still  to  be  seen  to-day, — strain- 
ing his  ears  in  his  effort  to  hear  the  key  of  the 
songs  of  larks  and  thrushes,  and  trying  in  his  sad, 
mad  way  to  catch  the  pitch  of  the  very  flowers 
and  weeds  about  him. 

He  died  in  i683,  aged  sixty-two,  one  of  the 
very  great  men  in  the  chronicles  of  violin-making. 

A  pupil  of  Jacob  Stainer  Avho  achieved  much 
distinction  was  Mathias  Albani  of  Botzen.  His 
violins  were  popular  all  over  Italy,  and  his  son 
was  even  more  talented,  and  a  pupil  of  Nicolo 
Amati. 

Marcus,  the  younger  brother  of  Jacob,  achieved 
a  certain  reputation  for  violin-making,  although 
in  a  much  smaller  degree  than  the  older  workman. 
He  was  apprenticed  to  his  brother,  after  the  latter's 
return  from  Italy,  and  learned  much  of  his  skill 
before  he  left  his  workshop  to  start  out  in  search 

[.14] 


®»  The  Song  of  the  Pine  <®> 

of  his  fortune.  He  estabhshed  himself  in  the 
village  of  Langen,  where  he  made  numbers  of 
rather  large  violins,  of  thin,  sw^eet  tone,  which 
some  persons  preferred  to  the  more  deeply  reso- 
nant instruments  of  more  celebrated  makers. 
He  was  a  man  who  spent  more  time  over  the  form 
and  colour  of  his  violins  than  Jacob,  gaining  a 
certain  fastidious  satisfaction  from  the  rich  brown 
of  that  varnish  of  his,  so  justly  renowned  not 
only  in  Tyrol,  but  in  Italy.  A  certain  sly,  crafty 
streak  in  Marcus  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  more 
than  once  he  was  known  to*  sell  violins  under 
Jacoh's  name,  benefiting  cheerfully  from  his 
brother's  wider  reputation.  He  was  not  without 
his  own  admirers,  however.  Even  so  late  as  In 
17/^6,  the  great  Florentine  violinist,  Ver acini, 
considered  his  two  Marcus  Stainer  violins  the 
finest  in  the  world.  He  named  them  "  St. 
Peter"  and  "St.  Paul,"  and  treasured  them  like 
jewels.  Both  these  instruments,  unquestionably 
Marcus  Stainer's  best,  were  lost  in  a  shipwreck. 
There  "are  very  few  of  his  violins  in  existence, 
and  those  few  are  prized  rather  as  specimens  of 
early  violin-making  than  as  valuable  instruments 
in  themselves.  They  all  bear  little  printed  slips, 
pasted  on  the  inside,  —  one  of  them  running: 
*' Marcus  Stainer,  Burger  and  Geige'nmacher 

[215] 


©OO  The  Heart  of  Music  «> 

[Burgher  and  Viohn-Maker]  in  Kupstien,  anno 
1659." 

There  is  a  story  which  is  sometimes  told  in 
connection  with  Jacob  Stainer,  but  which,  from 
all  we  know  of  both  brothers,  is  infinitely  more 
likely  to  have  happened  to  Marcus.  It  runs  as 
follows  : 

"Count  Trautmansdorff,  a  rich  noble,  and 
Grand  Equerry  to  the  Emperor  Charles  YI, 
desired  a  Stainer  violin,  to  add  to  his  already 
considerable  stock  of  treasures."  The  chronicle 
continues  :  "  He  paid  sixty-six  golden  caroluses, 
undertaking  to  supply  Stainer  as  long  as  he  lived 
with  a  good  dinner  every  day,  one  hundred  and 
eighty  florins  in  specie  every  month,  a  new  suit 
of  clothes  with  gold  frogs  every  year,  as  well  as 
two  casks  of  beer,  lodging,  firing,  and  lighting  ; 
and  further,  if  he  should  marry,  as  many  hares 
as  he  should  want  annually  for  himself,  and  as 
many  more  for  his  old  nurse.'* 

Does  not  this  sound  like  the  sort  of  agreement 
which  Marcus  Stainer  might  make  ? 

The  chronicle  concludes  in  this  fashion  : 

"Stainer  lived  sixteen  years  after  this,  so  the 
violin  must  have  cost  the  Count  in  all  twenty 
thousand  florins  in  cash !  " 

One  word  more  as  to  the  celebrated  ' '  Elector 

[.16] 


<>>  The  Song  of  the  Pine  <»> 

Stainers,  '  the  sixteen  exquisite  vioHns  with  rose- 
coloured  varnish,  one  of  which  was  presented  to 
each  Elector,  and  four  of  which  were  sent  to  the 
Emperor  of  Germany.  Three  of  these  beautiful 
fiddles  remain  in  existence;  the  rest  are  lost, — 
no  one  knows  how  or  where.  Undoubtedly  these 
"Rose  Violins"  were  the  work  of  Jacob,  in  spite 
of  the  statement  in  several  records  that  they  were 
made  in  a  monastery.  Possibly  the  two  brothers 
and  their  life  histories  have  become  confused  in 
the  minds  of  some  historians.  Marcus,  it  is 
believed,  did  spend  his  last  days  in  a  cloister, 
but  such  an  end  is  out  of  the  question  for  Jacob. 
The  records  of  his  tragic  insanity  are  too  in- 
controvertible. Probably  the  last  finished  works 
which  this  gifted  master  gave  to  the  world  were 
the  "lElector  Fiddles," — the  lovely  "Rose  Vio- 
lins" of  his  most  mature  conception  and  brilliant 
execution . 

The  last  picture  which  we  may  have  of  him  is 
in  the  garden,  among  the  birds  and  flowers  and 
tremulous  grasses,  dreaming  still,  even  in  his 
madness,   of  the  Perfect  Violin. 


F^iy] 


ofn  the  Wotkdkop 
of  Chmati 


"Now  you  know  very  well  that  there  are  fifty-eight^  different  pieces 
in  a  violin.  These  pieces  are  strangers  to  each  other,  and  it  takes  a 
century,  more  or  less,  to  make  them  thoroughly  acquainted.  At  last 
they  learn  to  vibrate  in  harmony,  and  the  instrument  becomes  an 
organic  whole,  as  if  it  were  a  great  seed-capsule,  which  had  grown  from 
a  garden-bed  in  Cremona."  —  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 


1  Dr.  Holmes  made  a  curious  error  here,  as  it  is  a  matter  of  common 
knowledge  that  there  are  seventy  pieces. 


XV.  —  In  the  Workshop  of  Amati 


1  HEY  were  always  busy  in  the  workshop  of 
Nicolo  Amati.  Outside,  life  waxed  and  waned 
in  Cremona;  powers  battled  at  the  gates, — so 
we  read  in  the  histories,  — great  nobles  rode  out 
to  war,  and  townspeople  fought  among  them- 
selves. Seasons  came,  hot  and  cold,  wet  and 
dry  ;  moons,  suns,  and  stars  shone  in  turn  ;  old 
wives  talked  garrulously  of  their  youth,  and 
young  maids  dreamed  over  their  spinning  at 
open  doorways  when  the  sun  was  orange-hot ; 
but  all  these  things  belonged  to  another  world. 

The  master  and  his  apprentices  had  work  to  do 
beside  which  the  little  affairs  of  nations  and  kings 
and  elements  and  cities  were  hardly  to  be  thought 
on.  They  were  busy  on  the  achievement  of  one 
deep  aim  that  reared  itself  splendidly  before  the 
eyes  of  each  of  them  ;  before  those  of  Nicolo 
Amati,  in  the  fleeting  mist  and  morn,  gleams  of 
a  vanished,  though  beautifully  understood  hope  ; 
before  those  of  Andrea  Guarnieri  as  a  lightning 
flash  of  promise  varied  with  rod  glories  from  a 
sunset  broken  with  cloud  ;  before  those  of 
Antonio    Stradivari    in    a    great    fire    of   golden 


«>>  The  Heart  of  Music  «> 

sunshine,  flooding  down  the  splendour  of  fulfil- 
ment in  a  light  that  was  as  the  voice  of  many 
archangels. 

Sometimes  it  stormed,  and  rain  fell  outside,  and 
winds  came  to  shatter  the  casements,  but  the  master 
only  raised  his  head  and  frowned  and  complained 
that  the  light  was  dim ,  or  that  the  breeze  blew  the 
flame  whereon  he  was  brewing  varnish. 

Here  in  the  old  workshop  were  collected  the 
greatest  names  in  the  history  of  violin-making, 
—  Amati,  Stradivari,  Guarnerius,  Ruggieri, 
Albani.  It  requires  but  a  small  effort  of  imagi- 
nation to  see  them  there,  among  the  beautiful 
dumb  things  some  day  to  sing  gloriously  to  a 
marvelling  world.  On  every  side  are  the  tools 
and  implements  necessary  to  the  actual  manu- 
facture of  the  instruments  ;  on  long  tables  lie 
the  slender,  satiny  strips  and  delicate  curves  of 
seasoned  woods  ;  on  shelves  are  arranged  the 
rare  balsams,  gums,  waxes,  and  oils  necessary  to 
the  preparation  of  the  miraculous  "  Cremonese 
varnish "  ;  at  one  side  is  steaming  slowly  a 
vessel  full  of  that  very  same  precious  liquid  ;  on 
the  walls  hang  instruments  of  varying  degrees 
of  perfection. 

Here  is  white  wood,  fine  as  silk  or  a  woman's 
skin,  drying  after  its  long  process  of  mellowing 

[  222  ] 


<¥>  In  the  Workshop  of  Amali  <X® 

and  seasoning.  Here  is  a  pile  of  spotted  maple, 
held  in  a  vise,  that  the  tone  and  pitch  may  be 
accurately  taken  by  a  hammer  before  it  is  carved 
into  a  delicate  and  graceful  violin  bridge.  Here 
is  a  strip  of  w^ood,  tested  and  true,  ready  for  its 
adjustment  as  bass  bar,  and  calculated  to  stand 
the  strain  of  from  sixty  to  eighty  pounds.  To 
the  woods  and  the  separate  parts  of  the  instru- 
ments we  will  return,  but  first  we  will  cross  the 
room  to  a  chest  which  stands  in  the  corner. 

In  this  chest  we  can  discover  some  of  the  more 
valuable  of  the  ingredients  for  the  making  of  the 
precious  varnish.  The  list  seems  a  curious  one 
to  our  modern  minds  :  plum-tree  gum,  Venetian 
turpentine,  white  resin,  threads  of  saffron,  aloes, 
henatica,  gum  mastic,  frankincense,  juniper  gum, 
sandalwood,  linseed  oil,  benzoin,  madder,  tar- 
taric acid,  logwood,  Brazil  wood,  cinnebar, 
patassa  lye,  elemi,  copal,  Grecian  wax,  alum, 
and  spirits  of  wine  !  These  and  many  other 
strange  things  are  recommended  by  Alexis  of 
Piedmont  and  his  successors  in  the  arts  of  the 
sixteenth,  seventeenth,  and  eighteenth  centuries 
for  varnish  that  should  be  golden  and  glittering 
or  clear  and  transparent,  that  by  judicious  mixing, 
powdering,  pounding,  testing,  boiling,  drying  in 
the  sun,  and    other    elaborate   processes    should 

[223] 


<^  The  Heart  of  Music  ®X> 

take  on  hues  of  crimson,  purple,  dull  red, 
scarlet,  brown,  lemon  colour,  orange,  amber, 
greenish  yellow,  burnt  umber,  flame  colour,  and 
saffron,  as  the  artisan  might  desire. 

There  were  also  methods  of  boiling  various 
sorts  of  wood  —  Orleans  mahogany  and  Per- 
nambuco  wood,  for  instance  —  to  extract  the  sap 
for  use  as  colouring  matter ;  also  glue  solutions 
and  infusions  of  isinglass,  poppy-seeds,  and 
kurkuma. 

The  actual  secret  of  the  Gremonese  varnish  is, 
however,  in  spite  of  all  these  specific  directions 
and  amazingly  plentiful  ingredients,  as  mysterious 
and  insoluble  as  ever.  A  variety  of  theories  has 
been  advanced  by  eminent  connoisseurs  :  that  it 
was  made  of  amber,  fused  by  dry  heat  which 
would  not  impair  its  transparency,  boiled  into 
varnish  with  oil  and  spirits  of  turpentine,  and 
blended  with  colours  w  hile  hot ;  that  it  was 
simply  a  spirit  varnish  (because  when  you  drop 
alcohol  on  a  "  Strad  "  it  makes  a  spot)  ;  that  it  is 
all  a  matter  of  time  and  the  mellowing  process 
of  years ;  that  it  was  a  plain  oil  varnish  ;  that  it 
was  only  a  question  of  unadulterated  materials, 
and  that  the  pure  gums  and  oils  have  gone  off  the 
market.  Charles  Reade  suggests:  "Three  or 
four  coats  of  oil  varnish  containing  common  gum, 

[224] 


<:sf>  In  the  Workshop  of  Amali  ®X^ 

and  several  coats  of  red  varnish,  made  by  dis- 
solving fine  red  gum  in  spirit,  from  which  the 
alcohol  was  allowed  to  evaporate,"  and  adds  tliat 
the  deep  red  varnish  was  coloured  by  "  dragon's 
blood"  and  the  yellow  by  "gamboge  in  its  pure 
form."  Nevertheless,  Reade  himself  concludes 
his  theorising  with  this  paragraph  : 

' '  Many  violin  makers  have  tried  hard  to  dis- 
cover the  secret  of  this  varnish.  Many  chemists 
have  given  anxious  days  and  nights  to  it.  More 
than  once,  even  in  my  time,  hopes  have  been  high, 
but  only  to  fall  again.  Some  have  even  cried 
'  Eureka  '  to  the  public ;  but  the  moment  others 
looked  at  their  discovery  and  compared  it  to  the 
real  thing,  inextinguishable  laughter  shook  the 
skies.  At  last  despair  has  succeeded  to  all  that 
energetic  study,  and  the  varnish  of  Cremona  is 
sullenly  given  up  as  a  lost  art." 

Nearly  all  writers  on  violins  have  commented 
upon  this  strange  enigma  of  connoisseurs  and 
makers  —  George  Hart  as  follows  : 

"The  more  its  lustre  penetrates  the  soul,  the 
more  determined  become  the  elTorts.  As  yet, 
however,  all  such  praiseworthy  researches  have 
been  futile,  and  the  composition  of  the  Cremonese 
varnish  remains  a  secret  lost  to  the  world — as 
much  so  as  the  glorious  ruby  lustre  of  Giorgio, 


«s  The  Heart  of  Music  «> 

and  the  blue  so  coveted  by  connoisseurs  in 
china." 

On  and  on  go  the  theorists,  but  the  answer 
to  their  conjectures  is  simple  :  none  of  them  as 
yet  made  the  varnish ! 

Meanwhile  old  Nicolo  and  his  apprentices  are 
at  work  in  the  Cremono  Avorkshop,  toiling  anx- 
iously and  swiftly,  albeit  Avith  the  most  exquisite 
and  painstaking  care,  lest  one  moment  of  golden 
daylight  and  still  more  golden  time  be  Avasted,  by 
a  mistake,  a  hesitation,  or  a  second's  distraction. 
Here  under  the  veteran  Amati's  aged  but  Avatchful 
eyes  every  hour  takes  on  the  value  of  a  jeAvel, 
and  such  dreams  as  may  be  dreamed  in  this  quiet, 
work-filled  place  are  those  that  may  fit  Avorthily 
betAveen  corner-block  and  belly,  bridge  and  bass 
bar,  sound-post  and  back. 

The  old  Gremonese  saying  is :  "  Given  :  a  log 
of  wood  ;  make  :  a  fiddle."  Here  are  the  logs 
of  Avood,  and  here  the  fiddles  ;  and  here,  too,  are 
the  masters  Avho  solved  that  quaint  old  problem. 

EdAvard  Heron-Allen,  maker  and  student  of 
fiddles,  has  given  the  following  succinct  descrip- 
tion of  the  violin : 

"Let  us  look  at  the  tout-ensemble  of  a  fiddle. 
What  is  it?  It  is  a  hollow  box,  from  thirteen  to 
fourteen  inches  in  length  ;    at  the  Avidest  point 

[226] 


«X>  In  the  Workshop  of  Amati  <«0 

eight  inches  and  a  half,  and  at  the  narrowest  four 
inches  and  a  half,  broad.  It  is  about  two  inches 
and  a  half  in  the  deepest  part  and  weighs  about 
eight  ounces  and  a  half.  Beyond  this  we  have  a 
neck  terminating  in  a  scroll,  which,  with  pegs, 
finger-board,  and  tail-piece  of  ebony,  bring  the 
weight  up  to  about  twenty  ounces.  The  won- 
drous capabilities  and  wonderful  equilibrium  of 
all  the  parts  may  be  summed  up  in  one  short 
sentence — it  supports  a  tension  on  the  strings  of 
sixty-eight  pounds,^  and  a  vertical  pressure  on 
the  bridge  of  twenty-six  pounds." 

In  every  fiddle  there  are  seventy  separate  and 
distinct  parts,  seventy  perfect  pieces  to  be  fitted 
together  all  in  absolute  harmony  and  complete 
balance.  This  number  becomes  eighty-three  un- 
der certain  conditions,  as  may  be  seen  later.  The 
seventy  parts  are  as  follows  :  Back,  two  pieces ; 
belly,  two;  corner  blocks,  six;  linings,  twelve; 
bass  bar,  one ;  purfling,  twenty-four ;  tail-piece 
rest,  one  ;  tail-piece,  one  ;  tail-piece  fastening, 
one;  tail-pin,  one;  pegs,  four;  finger-board, 
one;  bridge,  one;  nut,  one;  strings,  four; 
sound-post,  one  ;  and  neck  and  scroll,  one.  This 
division  is  occasionally  varied  by  letting  in  the 

1  When  Heron-Allen  wrote  this  the  violin  pitch  had  not  been  raised, 
bringing  the  tension  up  to  over  eighty  pounds, 

[227I 


«s>  The  Heart  of  Music  <:«f> 

purflings  in  thirty-six  sections  instead  of  twenty- 
four,  and  in  making  the  neck  and  scroll  in  two 
pieces.  There  are  also  fiddles  in  Avhich  the  back 
and  belly  are  each  made  in  one  unbroken  piece, 
but  they  are  rare. 

The  wood  used  for  the  backs  of  violins  is 
maple,  pear-tree,  or  sycamore, — the  first  being 
generally  considered  the  finest.  For  their  bellies 
Swiss  or  Tyrolean  white  pine  is  preferred, — of 
even  grain,  fine  but  not  too  close.  Careful 
makers  will  use  only  the  wood  taken  from  the 
south  side  of  the  trunks  of  trees  growing  on  the 
southern  edge  of  the  forest,  —  that  the  tempering 
of  sun  and  air  may  be  the  more  perfect,  —  and 
some  of  the  older  masters  would  cut  their  wood 
only  from  a  small  space  at  a  certain  distance 
between  the  bark  and  the  heart,  and  between  the 
boughs  and  the  roots  ;  they  were  also  scrupu- 
lously careful  about  the  seasons  in  which  they 
cut  the  trees, — the  months  of  December  and 
January  being  the  favourite  time. 

The  Cremonese  makers  are  said  to  have  gotten 
their  wood  from  a  variety  of  sources,  not  only 
from  Switzerland  and  Tyrol,  but  also  from 
Croatia,  Dalmatia,  and  Turkey.  Fetis  says  that 
much  Turkish  wood  was  sent  to  Venice  for 
galley-oars,   and  that  the  Turks,   being  at  war 

[228] 


«^  In  the  Workshop  of  Amati  @» 

with  the  Venetians  most  of  the  time,  picked  out 
the  waviest,  curliest,  loosest-grained  woods  pos- 
sible, that  the  oars  might  break  and  rot  the 
sooner.  This  wood  the  French  authority  con- 
cludes was  used  by  the  fiddle  makers.  This 
may  be  true,  but  it  is  odd  that  it  should  have 
been  so,  the  loose,  coarse,  crooked  grain  being 
peculiarly  ill-adapted  to  violins,  and  the  Swiss 
and  Tyrolean  maple,  as  well  as  the  Italian  pear- 
tree,  being  much  more  available. 

The  white  pine  was  usually  brought  from 
Schwytz  or  Lucerne.  Much  of  the  wood  had  to 
be  floated  down  long  mountain  streams  and  so 
required  months,  and  occasionally  years,  of  dry- 
ing and  tempering  before  it  could  be  used.  The 
more  illustrious  of  the  makers  kept  great  quanti- 
ties of  wood  of  various  kinds  mellowing  through 
the  passing  seasons.  Some  of  them  had  proc- 
esses, involving  brine  and  other  preservatives,  to 
strengthen  or  season  the  fibres.  The  wood  thus 
kept  could  not  be  stored  in  cellars  or  closets,  but 
if  it  had  been  rafted  or  floated  down  from  dis- 
tant forests  it  had  to  be  kept  as  constantly  in  the 
sun  and  air  as  possible  for  at  least  five  years. 
In  this  time  no  dampness  must  approach  the 
wood,  and  until  the  seasoning  was  complete  no 
maker  dared  use  it  lest  it  warp  in  the  workshops, 

[^29] 


«»  The  Heart  of  Music  <^> 

or  later,  and  the  whole  fiddle  crack  or  bend. 
Red  pine  was  sometimes  used  instead  of  white, 
and  also  deal,  and  even  plane-wood,  but  all  had 
to  be  of  unexceptionable  quality.  The  grain 
must  always  be  even,  and  it  must  have  in  it 
no  perversity  of  wave  or  curve,  no  flaw  or 
blemish,  no  embryo  knot  or  germ  of  decay, 
no  faintest  blush  of  colour  even.  The  grain  of 
all  the  seventy  parts  must  run  lengthwise  to 
assist  vibration. 

The  wood  is  always  cut  with  an  axe,  to  leave 
the  fibres  uncut,  —  the  saw  injures  and  tears  the 
fine  wood  nerves.  It  is  split  into  blocks  and 
planks  before  the  finer  workmanship  is  begun. 
The  larger  parts  are  made  of  joined  wood, — 
that  is,  wood  that  has  been  cut  in  wedge-shaped 
pieces  from  the  log  and  joined  together  so  as  to 
bring  to  the  surface  the  part  of  the  wood  that  grew 
farthest  from  the  heart  of  the  tree.  This  wood 
is  finer  and  smoother  in  grain,  the  new  layers 
which  form  each  year  growing  closer  and  nearer 
together  with  every  season.  The  wedge-shaped 
slices  of  wood  give  the  exact  distribution  of 
vibratory  fibres  necessary  to  the  perfect  sound- 
board, as  well  as  keeping  the  thickest  and  heavi- 
est wood  under  the  strings  when  the  tension  is 
greatest.      So  the  wood  is  always  cut  this  way 

[23o] 


«®  In  the  Workshop  of  Amati  «^ 

and  not  crosswise,  as  the  first  viol  makers  pre- 
ceding Amati  naturally  cut  it. 

In  these  days  every  one  of  the  seventy  pieces 
is  cut  out  and  shaped  with  the  aid  of  a  compass, 
for  a  hair's  breadth  of  difl'erence  will  spoil  the 
value  and  proportion,  and  consequently  the 
sound.  How  did  the  early  makers  gauge  so 
absolutely  the  measurements  of  the  component 
parts  of  their  fiddles  ?  How  did  they  know  so 
unerringly  the  subtle  tricks  of  tension  and  bal- 
ance and  weight  and  proportion,  and  other  in- 
tricacies which  we  explain  according  to  logic  and 
rote  to-day?  How  did  they  find  out,  for  instance, 
the  highest  possible  demonstration  of  the  neces- 
sity that  the  quality  of  the  wood  in  hand  should 
determine  the  thickness  of  the  pieces  cut,  and 
also  the  shape  of  the  instrument  ? 

Lest  this  last  sentence  be  unintelligible  to  any 
of  my  readers,  let  me  explain  more  fully.  The 
'jreater  the  tension  in  'the  formation  of  a  violin, 
the  higher  the  tone.  Although  every  violin  is  a 
thing  made  entirely  of  curves,  a  thing  without 
one  single  straight  or  flat  line,  a  thing  wherein 
the  heaviest,  steadiest  weight  pulls  against  every 
integral  portion,  rounding  out  body  and  tone  to 
the  fullest  symmetry  of  perfection,  there  is  a 
great  variety  possible  in  the  degree  and  accentu- 

[23,] 


«>  The  Heart  of  Music  «> 

ation  of  these  curves.  A  fiddle  too  fully  curved 
and  hollo w^ed  will  have  a  thick,  tubby,  mealy 
tone;  one  that  is  too  flat  will  have  a  shrill, 
screaming  voice  that  tears  the  ear  with  what 
the  Germans  call  its  "  Geschrei  (high  shriek)." 
Now,  here  is  where  the  sagacity  and  intuition  of 
the  master  makers  worked  in  such  exquisite 
union.  They  learned  to  allow  for  the  resonance 
or  dullness  of  their  wood,  —  as  a  crack  shot 
allows  for  the  wind  in  aiming  at  bull's  eye  or 
bird,  —  and  to  discount  the  exaggerated  quality 
of  the  material  by  a  counter  exaggeration  in  the 
shape  and  size  of  the  instrument !  If  the  wood 
chosen  gave,  when  tested  with  a  metal  hammer, 
a  note  that  was  exceptionally  high  and  sharp  in 
pitch,  the  master  knew  that  the  tone  must  be 
diffused  and  softened  ;  hence  he  built  a  large 
violin  that  was  all  rounded  contours  and  heavy 
curves.  The  sharp  wood  and  the  round  tubby 
model  counteracted  each  other's  faults,  and  a 
perfect  violin  was  made.  If  the  wood  was 
very  low  in  pitch  and  lacking  in  resonance, 
out  with  the  small,  flat,  thin  model  and  make 
one  even  flatter  and  thinner.  The  weight  on 
belly,  sides,  and  back  in  a  violin  that  is  only 
slightly  curved  is  enormous,  and  the  almost 
bursting  tension  carries  the  soft,  dull  voice  of 
[282] 


<^>  In  the  Workshop  of  Amati  <®> 

the  wood  up  into  the  desired  area  of  vibration. 
So  another  perfect  viohn  is  made ! 

The  "purfling"  of  the  violin  is  probably  one 
of  the  most  mysterious  phrases  and  mysterious 
processes  in  all  violin-making  to  most  uniniti- 
ated laymen.  It  is  from  the  French  of  course 
— ' '  pourfiler , ' '  roughly  translated ,  "  to  thread ' '  — 
and  is  the  survival,  Mr.  Payne  explains,  of  "the 
elaborate  decoration  with  which  stringed  instru- 
ments were  anciently  covered."  Every  violin 
has  a  delicate  finish  like  the  most  supple,  sinu- 
ous, gleaming  cord,  that  forms  a  border  to  the 
entire  instrument,  covering  the  joining  line  of 
sides  and  belly  and  sides  and  back.  This  bor- 
der is  useful  as  well  as  ornamental,  for  it  acts 
as  a  protection  and  consequent  preservative  to 
the  fine  angles  and  edges  of  the  violin  and  pre- 
vents cracks  and  other  injuries.  The  purfling  is 
usually  done  with  a  slip  of  maple  or  sycamore, 
glued  between  two  slips  of  ebony,  and  all  fitted 
into  the  narrow  groove  which  has  been  cut  for 
them.  The  excessive  delicacy  of  this  work  may 
be  guessed  from  the  fragility  of  such  very  slender 
slips,  and  the  great  danger  of  their  breaking  or 
bending.  The  hands  that  do  purfling  must  be 
deft  and  steady,  as  strong  as  steel  and  as  light  as 
snow.      That  is  why  so  many  modern  makers  of 

[233] 


<»  The  Heart  of  Music  @x> 

the  second  class  make  a  line  of  paint  or  ink 
around  the  edges  of  their  violins  to  take  the 
place  of  the  elaborate  process  so  beloved  by  the 
old  masters. 

One  by  one  the  secrets  of  tone  were  'mastered 
by  the  inmates  of  that  long-ago  workshop  in 
dreamy  Cremona.  One  by  one  they  learned  the 
pulse  of  the  Heart  of  Music, — the  old  master 
and  his  silent,  alert  apprentices  as  they  toiled 
day  by  day  over  fine  sheets  of  wood  and  heavy 
glue-pots,  over  delicate  carving  and  the  dexterous 
blending  of  gum  and  balsam  and  secret  ingre- 
dients. One  by  one  they  mastered  the  strange, 
heaven-born  tongue  of  their  beloved  instrument. 

"This  small,  sweet  thing. 

Devised  in  love  and  fashioned  cunningly 

Of  wood  and  strings." 

At  the  time  that  we  have  taken  a  peep  into  the 
historic  workshop  Nicolo  Amati  was  seventy-one, 
and  as  yet  the  master  of  fiddle-making.  His  son 
Geronimo,  who  worked  Avith  him  in  the  shop, 
never  achieved  distinction  as  a  violin  maker  or  in 
any  other  line.  One  can  imagine  the  brilliant 
eyes  of  the  old  master  flash  with  impotent  re- 
sentment from  under  his  gray  eyebrows  as  he 
glanced  from  Geronimo  to  the  others,  and  com- 
pared the  dull  and  uninspired  work  of  his  son 

[234] 


®»  In  the  Worksliop  of  Amali  ^X^ 

with  the  quick  facility  and  brilliant  adaptability 
of  such  lads  as  Mathias  Albaiii,  Giovanni  Battista 
Ruggieri,  and  Antonio  Stradivari.  Andreas 
Guarnieri  and  his  little  son  Giuseppe  were  also 
inmates  of  the  workshop,  but  ntMiher  of  thcin 
were  apprentices.  Tlie  latter  was  still  a  liny 
child,  and  the  former  had  been  making  violins 
of  varying  degrees  of  merit  for  seventeen  years. 
But  everyone  under  Nicolo  Amali 's  inlluencc 
worked  like  slaves,  for  he  permitted  no  laziness. 
Perhaps  it  was  thus  that  Stradivari  first  acquired 
his  extraordinary  genius  for  industry,  the  inex- 
haustible and  incomparable  energy  which  was  to 
endure  through  all  the  years  of  his  long  life. 

Of  Ruggieri,  Albani,  and  Grancino  we  have 
spoken  before  ;  it  remains  for  us  now  to  concern 
ourselves  briefly  with  the  two  greatest  of  all  names 
in  violin  history,  —  Stradivari  and  Guarnieri. 

But  first  of  all  let  us  pause  to  consider  that 
small  slender  wizard  without  which  Amati  and 
his  successors  would  have  laboured  in  vain,  — 
the  bow. 


[235] 


^ke  Violin  d  Jdovcz 


\ 


^■^J 


« 


"...  The  bow  Is  the  male  and  the  strings  are  the  female  elements. 
They  can  only  vibrate  when  touched — swept  into  a  tempest  of  emotion, 
or  caressed  into  tender  whispers.  They  wait  and  pine  for  this  magic 
touch,  and  long  for  their  own  fulfillment."  —  Rev.  H.  R.  Haweis. 


XVI. — The  Violin's   Lover 


1  HE  most  perfect  fiddle  in  the  world  would 
be  silent,  stupid,  and  valueless  without  the 
bow.  Neither  harps  nor  lutes  arc  instruments 
in  which  the  spirit  of  sex  is  dominant;  the 
harp  is  in  its  very  essence  and  character  a 
celibate,  and  the  lute,  in  spite  of  its  checkered 
career,  is  a  thing  of  very  thin,  pale  passions 
at  best,  giving  but  a  sterile  music,  with  neither 
fire  nor  blood-corpuscles.  As  for  the  violin, 
what  would  it  be  without  its  lover?  A  barren 
blossom,  an  unfinished  vessel,  an  old  maid  among 
instruments. 

The  relations  of  the  sexes  were  never  so  ex- 
quisitely illustrated  and  symbolised  than  by  the 
violin  and  the  bow.  Masculine  dominance  and 
strength  and  activity  ;  feminine  submission,  pas- 
sivity, and  responsiveness  :  where  can  you  find 
the  metaphor  clearer  than  in  this  instrument, 
which,  in  its  complete  form,  is  two  in  one,  the 
male  and  the  female  ?  The  bow  alone  can  bring 
forth  the  hidden  sweetness  of  the  violin's  secret 
heart;  without  her  strings  the  bow  is  dumb,  —  a 
mere  stick  of  wood  strung  with  hair.      Together 

[239] 


<js:>  The  Heart  of  Music  ««• 

they  can  make  the  angels  stand  still  in  heaven 
to  listen. 

The  evolution  of  the  bow^  has  been  as  gradual 
as  that  of  everything  else.  It  has  had  its  day 
of  uncouthness,  of  faulty,  halting  utterance,  and 
awkAvard  expression,  but,  like  the  violin,  it  found 
the  final  form  best  suited  to  its  use  and  mission, 
and  to-day  is  only  less  important  to  the  fiddle 
lover  than  his  "  Strad"  or  Giuseppe  itself. 

We  remember  the  curved  stick  with  the  crotch 
in  one  end  and  the  strand  of  hair  finished  by  a 
knot,  which  served  for  a  bow  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
Farther  back  still  Ave  have  seen  that  a  flexible  rod 
with  a  string  or  animal  sinew  was  used,  and  that 
in  the  early  Oriental  days  a  bamboo  cane  was 
considered  sufficient  and  satisfactory. 

The  primitive  boAv  was  almost  triangular  in 
shape,  so  sharp  was  its  curve.  Then,  in  about 
1620,  the  stick  grew  straighter,  and  a  jutting 
piece  separated  it  from  the  hair  at  one  end.  It 
was  thus  pointed  in  shape,  the  widest  and  heaviest 
part  resting  in  the  hand.  A  primitive  nut  and 
head,  composed  of  wire  and  iron,  regulated  the 
tension  of  the  hair.  This  bow,  when  somewhat 
modified  in  16/10,  was  a  distinct  step  in  the  right 
direction,  though  the  next  phase  of  development, 
1660,  shows  a  curious  step  backw^ard  in  a  short, 

[2/10] 


Osr>  I'he  Violin's  Lover  <x^ 

very  heavy,  ungainly  bow,  with  a  pronounced 
curve  toward  the  end  of  the  stock.  In  iG65  they 
invented  a  weird  thing  that  had  teeth  at  one  end, 
into  wliich  the  hair,  ending  in  loops,  could  be 
hooked.  No  real  progress  was  made  until,  in 
1700,  Corelli  made  the  first  rational  and  prac- 
ticable bow  ever  brought  to  the  light  of  day.  It 
was  still  far  from  perfect,  being  much  too  short, 
not  at  all  elastic,  and  absolutely  straight;  but  it 
was  made  of  light  wood,  the  principle  of  it  was 
right,  and  it  laid  the  stepping-stones  for  future 
makers. 

Arcangelo  Corelli  was  one  of  the  famous  com- 
posers of  his  day,  as  well  as  a  most  brilliant  and 
advanced  violinist.  He  was  born  in  Fusignano, 
Imola,  in  i653,  and  studied  under  the  masters 
Matteo  Simonelli  and  Giovanni  Battista  Bassani. 

He  is  renowned  for  his  friendships  with 
Cardinal  Ottoboni,  in  whose  house  he  lived;  the 
painters  Cignani  and  Maratti,  who  helped  him 
collect  pictures ;  and  Handel,  whose  music  he  was 
wont  to  murder,  until,  on  one  occasion  at  least, 
the  German  would  seize  the  violin  from  his  hands 
in  a  fury.  When  corrected  in  this  manner  by  his 
illustrious  colleague,  Corelli  said  mildly,  and  with 
his  all-pervading  Italian  courtesy:  "Ma,  Caro 
Sassone,  questa    musica   e   nel  stilo   francese,  di 


<K®  The  Heart  of  Music  «^ 

ch'io  non  m  intendo  !  (But,  my  dear  Saxon,  this 
music  is  in  the  French  style,  »^th  which  I  have 
no  experience!)"  This  was  the  more  unfor- 
tunate in  that  Handel  had  written  the  thing  par- 
ticularly for  Corelli,  and  to  suit  his  technical 
faciHty  on  the  \iohn. 

He  had  an  unlucky  experience  with  Alessandro 
Scarlatti  too.  He  conducted  and  played  the  solo  in 
a  composition  by  the  great  NeapoKtan,  and  played 
it  in  C  major  instead  of  C  minor.  One  of  the 
musicians  played  it  properly,  and  CoreUi.  noting 
the  discord,  began  again.  Once  more —  C  major ! 
Scarlatti,  who  was  present,  smiled,  with  poHte 
encouragement,  and  murmured,  ' '  Ricominciamo ! 
(Let  us  begin  once  more  ! ) "  They  did.  C  major 
again!  \Mien  Corelli  reahsed  the  enormity  of 
his  musical  mistake,  he  was  stunned  with  despair, 
and.  being  a  rather  Hmited  person,  who  took  him- 
self yery  seriously  and  had  no  sense  of  humour, 
he  left  Naples  at  once. 

Soon  after  this  he  found  himself  ousted  from 
pubhc  favour  by  a  new  violinist  named  \  alentini, 
and  a  year  later,  17 12,  he  died  —  of  a  broken 
heart,  his  friends  said. 

He  left  behind  him  a  number  of  unusually  valu- 
able works  for  the  \4oHn,  but  his  two  greatest 
heritages  to  the  musical  world  were  the  improved 

[342] 


<»  The  Violin's  Lover  <x> 

bow  which  he  invented  and  used,  and  the  innova- 
tions which  he  introduced  in  the  technicahties  of 
vioHn-playing.  In  this  he  had  no  competitor  in 
his  day,  and  the  theories  of  execution  which  he 
was  able  to  demonstrate  created  a  standard  which, 
in  some  respects,  has  remained  unchanged  ever 
since. 

The  next  famous  inventor  of  bow  improvements 
was  another  composer  and  violinist,  Giuseppe 
Tartini,  born  in  1692,  atPirano,  in  Istria.  He  was 
an  odd  character,  who  spent  the  first  part  of  his 
life  in  rebellion,  disobedience  to  authorities,  and 
unreasonable  love  affairs,  and  the  rest  of  it  in  a 
gentleness  of  heart  and  art  as  admirable  as  it  was 
amazing. 

Perhaps  his  singularly  unpleasant  wife  had 
a  chastening  influence,  and  then,  too,  the  ever- 
present  sorrow  of  his  lack  of  children  affected  him 
sorely.  He  was  a  big-hearted  man  through  all  his 
vicissitudes,  and  as  such  yearned  for  his  own  sons 
and  daughters.  FaiKng  these,  he  made  his  pupils 
his  children,  and  they  loved  him  devotedly.  He 
wrote  some  brilliant  music  for  the  violin  —  far  in 
advance,  technically,  of  that  of  Corelli — and  made 
a  bow  that  was  longer,  slenderer,  more  flexible, 
and  infinitely  easier  to  manipulate  than  any  that 
had  been  fashioned  before. 

[2^3] 


@»  The  Heart  of  Music  <s(> 

He  was  also  the  composer  of  "II  Trillo  del 
Diavolo,  "  one  of  the  most  famous  of  the  early 
sonatas,  and  an  extraordinary  piece  of  work,  judged 
by  any  standards.  He  wrote  the  story  of  this 
remarkable  piece  of  music  in  these  words  : 

' '  One  night  I  dreamt  that  I  had  made  a  bargain 
with  the  Devil  for  my  soul.  Everything  went  ac- 
cording to  my  command  ;  my  bond  servant  antici- 
pated all  my  wishes.  Then  the  idea  struck  me  to 
hand  him  my  fiddle,  and  to  see  what  he  could  do 
with  it.  But  how  great  was  my  astonishment 
when  I  heard  him  play  with  consummate  skill  a 
sonata  of  such  exquisite  beauty  as  surpassed  the 
boldest  flight  of  my  imagination.  I  was  enrap- 
tured, transported,  enchanted ;  my  breath  was 
taken  away ;  and  ...  I  awoke !  Seizing  my 
violin,  I  tried  to  retain  the  sounds  I  had  heard. 
But  it  was  in  vain.  The  piece  I  then  composed, 
the  'Devil's  Sonata,'  was  the  best  I  ever  wrote, 
but  how  far  below  the  one  I  had  heard  in  my 
dream!" 

So  we  came  to  the  perfecter  of  the  bow,  Francois 
Tourte.  He  was  born  in  Paris  in  17/17,  and  died 
there  in  1 835.  He  was  one  of  a  family  well-known 
already  as  bow  makers,  his  father  and  his  elder 
brother  Xavier  having  won  comparative  distinction 
in  that  line.      He  himself  was,  however,  a  unique 


«^»  The  Violin's  Lover  «» 

person,  both  as  a  workman  and  as  a  man.  He 
was  nothing,  if  not  original. 

After  experimenting  on  every  kind  of  wood  and 
upon  a  vast  variety  of  objects  which  would  seem 
to  have  not  the  remotest  connection  with  violin 
bows,  he  finally  tried  making  bows  out  of  the 
staves  of  old  sugar-hogsheads  shipped  from  Brazil. 
There  he  stopped,  and  went  no  further,  for  he  had 
found  what  he  wanted.  The  wood  was  right  ; 
the  saccharine  quality  could  be  added  by  liquid 
preparations,  heating,  and  other  simple  processes. 
Voila!  the  thing  was  done!  And  violin  bows 
are  still  made  of  Brazilian  wood  I 

He  made  great  numbers  of  bows,  and  worked 
until  he  was  quite  old.  His  finest  bows  have 
nuts  of  tortoise-shell  and  are  mounted  in  gold, 
and  he  charged  for  them  twelve  louis  dor.  To- 
day they  bring  from  fifteen  to  thirty  pounds. 

When  he  got  tired  making  bows,  he  used  to  go 
and  sit  on  the  banks  of  the  Seine  and  fish  for 
gudgeon  till  the  sun  went  down  and  the  mists 
began  to  rise.  He  was  eighty-eight  when  he 
died,  and  he  worked  unceasingly  until  the  last 
year  of  his  life. 

Other  names  stand  out  in  the  records  of  bow- 
making  ;  notably  Nurember,  whom  many  per- 
sons consider  to  have  contributed  much   to  the 

[2/15] 


«js^  The  Heart  of  Music  «^ 

development  of  this  very  simple  thing  with  such 
huge  capabihties  for  producing  music.  But 
Corelh,  Tartini,  and  Tourte  are  the  men  to  whom 
the  consensus  of  authorities  gives  the  fullest 
credit. 

The  responsibility  of  the  violin  bow  is  a  heavy 
one.  As  it  is,  delicate,  elastic,  sensitive,  it  moves 
the  sulkiest  instrument  into  heavenly  sw^eet  har- 
monies;  but  just  suppose  it  were  rough,  or 
squeaky,  or  guttural  in  its  play  upon  the  strings  — 
Avhy  it  w  ould  make  the  clearest  voiced  fiddle  sound 
like  that  horrible  concert  of  Louis  XI  Avhen  they 
collected  big  and  little  pigs  and  pricked  them 
in  succession  to  make  them  squeal  on  different 
notes ! 


[246] 


6' 


uazaeziud 


^^;(j^'? 


r^'-<"-7«' 


«'>  \ 


''  E^. 


>< 


"The  *  Cannon'  of  Guarnerlus,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  speaks  in  a 
voice  of  thunder  against  all  those  who  I  trust  may  prove  to  have  been 
the  calumniators  of  the  man  who  made  it !  " —  George  Fleming. 


XVII.  — Guarnerius 


JL  HE  house  of  Guarnieri  achieved  so  rare  a  dis- 
tinction in  the  field  of  violin-making  that  the 
name  is  not  infrequently  spoken  in  the  same 
breath  as  that  of  Andrea's  illustrious  comrade  and 
fellow-student,  Stradivari.  The  first  of  the  family 
that  is  know^n  to  posterity  worked,  as  we  have 
seen,  with  old  Nicolo  Amati,  learned  his  craft 
from  the  example  and  teaching  of  the  greatest 
living  master  of  fiddle-fashioning,  and  even  after 
he  had  passed  the  age  of  apprenticeship  or  even 
study  lived  on  in  the  old  workshop,  acquiring 
finish  and  dexterity,  if  not  inspiration  and  origi- 
nality. Talent  Andrea  undoubtedly  had,  and  a 
strong  love  for  violins  and  the  making  of  them, 
but  he  lacked  the  genius  of  those  who  were  to 
come  after  him.  Grave,  unremarkable,  soberly 
interested,  but  utterly  lacking  in  distinction  of 
work,  he  sat,  year  by  year,  in  the  Cremonese 
workrooms,  while  the  younger,  newer  brains 
about  him  seized  ravenously  the  learning  which 
camie  to  him  so  laboriously,  and  lads  like  Antonio 
Stradivari,  Mathias,  Albani,  and  "  Giovanni  il 
Buono"  were  finishing  fiddles  that   the  Maestro 

[249] 


KK»  The  Heart  of  Music  «]s^ 

allowed  to  go  out  into  the  world  bearing  the  great 
label  "  Nicolaus  Amati  Cremonensis !  " 

Guarnieri's  son,  the  little  Giuseppe,  breathed 
in  the  atmosphere  of  yiolin-making  and  violin- 
worship  from  babyhood.  Perhaps  his  father, 
feeling  his  own  limitations,  and  guarding  still  his 
youthful  love  for  fiddles  and  dreams  of  bringing 
them  to  beautiful  perfection,  brought  up  the  child 
in  the  surroundings  best  calculated  to  influence 
his  impressionable  years. 

When  father  and  son  left  Amati  they  set  up  a 
workshop  of  their  own,  known  as  the  "  Sign 
of  Saint  Theresa  (Sub  Signo  Sanctae  Teresae)," 
which  curious  date  appears  on  all  Andrea's 
instruments,  and  many  of  his  son's  also.  The 
older  Guarnieri's  fiddles  were  fine  in  make,  though 
lacking  in  any  great  individuality.  Their  finish 
was  exquisite,  and  their  varnish  a  marvel  of  warm 
orange  tone.  The  artist  soul  in  this  silent  founder 
of  the  famous  violin-making  house  spent  itself 
luxuriously  upon  exquisite  purflings  and  orna- 
mental scrolls,  smooth,  graceful  bodies,  and  tints 
of  fire  and  gold.  To  his  two  sons,  Giuseppe  and 
Pietro,  he  bequeathed  a  higher  and  less  circum- 
scribed gift.  By  the  time  Andrea  had  outlived 
even  his  limited,  though  gracious,  usefulness, 
Giuseppe  (known  as  "  Giuseppe  Filius  Andreae" ) 

[25o] 


®»  Guarnerius  «> 

had  begun  to  make  fiddles  far  surpassing  his 
father's. 

' '  The  originality  of  the  Guarnieri  knew  no 
limits,"  says  one  writer,  commenting  upon  the 
remarkable  fact  that  no  two  of  this  exceptional 
house  made  violins  that  remotely  resembled  each 
other  in  model,  tone,  ornamentation,  varnish,  or 
method  of  manufacture.  Giuseppe  made  no 
attempt,  after  his  first  tentative  years  of  work, 
to  follow  his  father's  style,  and  rapidly  created  a 
form  and  quality  of  instrument  utterly  his  own. 
He  set  his  sound-holes  at  a  peculiar  angle,  insti- 
tuted a  very  sharply  accentuated,  narrow  waist, 
and  invented  a  varnish  with  the  clear  glitter  of 
sunlit  mica.  Incidentally  he  taught  his  little 
cousin,  named  after  him,  one  day  to  be  the  most 
illustrious  of  his  house,  and  the  second  greatest 
fiddle  maker  of  all  time.  The  period  of  activity 
of  Giuseppe  Filius  Andreae  was  1 690-1 780. 

The  younger  son  of  Andrea,  Pietro,  was  even 
more  original.  He  copied  neither  his  father  nor 
brother,  and  made  his  sound-holes  very  far  apart, 
and  of  an  entirely  new  shape.  His  model  was 
higher,  and  in  several  minor  parts  his  work  shows 
a  definite  attempt  to  progress  and  depart  definitely 
from  rigid  standards.  He  journeyed  to  Mantua 
as  soon  as  his  craft  was  mastered,  there  to  install 

[25l] 


®»  The  Heart  of  Music  ®» 

himself  under  a  second  ' '  Signo  Sanctae  Teresae  " 
and  to  win  fame  and  fortune  under  the  name  of 
"  Petrus  Cremonensis  "  —  Pietro  of  Cremona. 
He  began  work  about  the  same  time  as  Giuseppe, 
but  retired  five  years  earlier,  in  1725  in  fact, 
though  he  taught  violin-making  after  that.  His 
most  notable  pupil  was  his  nephew,  Giuseppe's 
son,  another  Pietro,  who  followed  his  uncle's 
rather  than  his  father's  methods,  and  followed  up 
a  style  of  work  which,  from  the  two  names  as- 
sociated with  it,  has  come  to  be  called  "  Petrine." 
He  began  work  in  1780,  the  year  of  his  father's 
retirement,  and  soon,  being  like  most  of  his 
people  a  rover  and  adventurer,  hied  himself  to 
Venice.  He  is  known  as  Pietro  of  \enice,  and 
closely  affiliated  himself  with  the  City  on  the  Sea. 
He  had  his  grandfather's  passion  for  artistic  detail 
and  wealth  of  color,  and  revelled  in  the  marvellous 
Venetian  varnishes,  which  seemed  to  burn  and 
glow  and  smoulder  and  intoxicate  as  one  gazed 
on  them.  His  violins  dazzle  the  senses  with  their 
splendid  colour  and  delicate  finish. 

Giuseppe  and  Pietro  (Petrus  Cremonensis)  had 
a  sister,  Caterina,  w^ho  is  said  to  have  knoAvn  more 
about  violin-making  than  was  quite  seemly  in  an 
Italian  maiden  of  the  higher  class  in  the  seven- 
teenth century. 

[262] 


«»  Guarnerius  «)» 

According  to  the  story,  she  used  to  help  her 
brothers  in  many  ways,  even  gaining  a  certain 
skill  in  the  construction  and  finish  of  the  instru- 
ments, as  well  as  mere  facility  in  assisting  the 
men.  How  many  scrolls  this  almost  unknown 
Gaterina  Guarnieri  may  have  carved,  nor  how 
much  purfling  let  in,  one  cannot  conjecture.  It 
is  curious  to  think  that  one  or  the  other  of  her 
celebrated  brothers  may  have  put  his  name  to  her 
work. 

Now,  meanwhile,  the  great  Maestro  Guarnieri 
had  been  living  and  working,  but  if  one  did  not 
speak  of  his  less  illustrious,  yet  eminent  kinsmen, 
to  begin  with,  one  would  forget  to  do  so  at  all, 
so  superlative  were  his  glory  and  genius  ;  and 
surely  that  would  not  be  giving  fitting  honour  to 
a  gifted  and  distinguished  house. 

Andrea  Guarnieri,  quiet  and  unassuming,  had 
a  brother  even  quieter  and  more  unassuming. 
This  brother  was  called  Giovanni  Battista,  or 
Giam'-battista,  and  he  never  dreamed  of  making 
a  violin  in  all  his  uneventful  life. 

Of  his  wife  we  know  little,  save  that  her  name 
was  Angela  Maria  Locadclla  —  a  musical  and 
suggestive  one.  Perhaps  she  was  a  creature  of 
emotion  and  ambition  and  transmitted  something 
of  fire  and  visions  to  her  son  ;   or  perhaps  it  was 

[253] 


<^C®  The  Heart  of  Music  ®X> 

only  a  remote  strain  of  music  love,  such  as  had 
cropped  out  so  soberly  in  Andrea,  and  now 
swelled  to  vivid  fulfilment  in  another  of  his  race. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  of  Angela  and  Giam'-battista 
was  born  on  the  eighth  of  June,  i683,  Giuseppe, 
— sometimes  known  as  "Giuseppe  del  Gesu," — 
the  last  and  greatest  of  the  fiddle-making  house 
of  Guarnieri. 

In  stirring  the  dust  that  lies  on  the  letters  of 
every  great  man's  name,  in  brushing  away,  or  at 
least  trying  to  brush  away,  the  cobwebs  that 
years,  however  rich  in  honours  and  apprecia- 
tion, must  leave,  in  lifting  the  lamp  of  inquiry 
in  the  dark,  silent  rooms  of  dead  lives,  one  i§ 
haunted  by  a  sensation  at  once  shrinking  and 
curious,  eager  and  yet  abashed.  One  longs  to 
enter  into  the  very  soul  and  heart  and  living 
blood  of  the  man  whose  ways  one  is  seeking  to 
follow,  and  at  the  same  time  one  shrinks,  because 
the  guardian  of  the  tomb  seems  absent,  from 
thrusting  into  its  sanctuary  even  the  intrusion  of 
a  prying  query  or  impertinent  conjecture.  Surely, 
one  says  to  oneself,  a  man's  grave  is  sacred ;  and 
by  dying  he  should  be  safe  from  being  turned 
into  a  public  problem,  still  less  a  public  interest. 

Yet,  if  one  pauses  to  consider,  the  guardian  of 
the   tomb   is   never   absent.      The  truth  of  this 

[254] 


«»  Guarnerius  C«C» 

man's  life  will  always  be  a  secret  ;  his  secret  will 
always  be  kept.  The  whole  world  may  pass  by 
on  the  outside,  may  peer  and  pry  as  they  will, 
may  even  lean  into  the  quiet  darkness  and  see 
the  casket  where  he  sleeps  through  the  centuries ; 
but  no  man  may  enter  there ;  the  guardian  of  the 
tomb  stands  watchful,  if  unseen.  So  we  may 
guess,  and  marvel,  and  wonder,  and  conjecture, 
and  theorise,  —  it  is  all  quite  safe  and  harmless. 
We  shall  never  disturb  the  ashes  even  of  his 
lightest  dream  or  thought. 

Thus,  from  the  outside,  straining  importunate 
eyes  to  pierce  the  shadows,  we  may  look  on  the 
much  storied,  much  discussed,  doubtless  much 
slandered  life  of  him  who  wrote  himself  upon  the 
musical  ages  as  "Guarnerius." 

As  has  been  said,  Giuseppe  del  Gesii  studied 
with  his  cousin,  whose  namesake  he  was,  and 
learned  all  that  that  redoubtable  master  could 
teach  him.  It  is  highly  probable,  moreover,  that 
his  erratic  and  original  genius  fed  itself  at  more 
than  one  source,  and  that  he  acquired  skill  not 
only  with  the  aid  of  his  kinsman,  but  under  the 
guidance  of  other  violin  makers  of  Cremona. 
It  has  even  been  asserted  that  one  of  his  masters 
was  Stradivari  himself,  and  although  open  to 
grave  doubts,  this  supposition  is  not  impossible. 

[255] 


<®:>  The  Heart  of  Music  CO* 

Payne  says :  ' '  Whoever  may  have  been  the  in- 
structor of  Joseph  Guarnerius,  his  real  master 
was  Gasparo  da  Salo.  He  revived  the  bold  and 
rugged  outhne  and  the  masterly  carelessness, 
and  with  it  ihe  massive  build  and  powerful  tone 
of  the  earlier  school.  Perfection  of  form  and 
style  had  been  attained  by  others  ;  tone  was  the 
main  quality  sought  by  Joseph,  and  the  endless 
variety  of  his  work,  in  size,  in  model,  and  in 
cutting  of  sound-holes,  merely  indicates  the  many 
ways  in  which  he  sought  it." 

From  the  first,  Giuseppe,  or  Guarnerius  as 
he  is  called,  scorned  the  restrictions  of  what  one 
writer  terms  "the  geometrical  curves,  fineness 
of  finish,  and  softness  of  tone "  of  the  Amati 
family.  He  studied  their  violins  as  he  studied 
those  of  his  kinsmen,  as  he  studied  Albani's, 
Ruggieri's,  Stainer's,  Stradivari's ;  but  his  im- 
patience discarded  the  exquisite  colouring  of  a 
Pietro  of  Venice  instrument  or  the  careful  finish 
of  one  by  Nicolo  Amati.  He  wanted  tone  — 
tone — tone,  and  always  tone.  Who  cared  for 
the  body  ?  It  was  the  soul  he  was  trying  to  find 
and  fetter. 

To  the  old  Salo  instruments  he  turned  with  an 
inevitable  and  peculiar  tenderness.  Here  was 
the  voice  that  cried  and  commanded, — not  the 

[256] 


KK^  Guarnerius  @» 

perfect  voice  of  his  dreams,  but  a  full,  round 
organ,  before  which  things  vibrated.  Brescia, 
w^ith  Maggini  and  his  school,  furnished  most  of 
the  models  that  first  fired  young  Guarnerius. 
He  drank  in  the  spirit  of  the  violin  ;  lived  in  the 
essence  of  fiddle-making,  with  the  ideal  of  the 
perfect  stringed  instrument  before  his  eyes.  And 
long  before  any  sane  person  could  have  dreamed 
that  he  had  half  mastered  the  rudiments  of  his 
art,  he  began  to  make  violins. 

He  obtained,  no  one  knows  how,  a  huge  piece 
of  pine,  with  a  peculiarly  musical  pitch  and 
great  acoustic  properties.  "  This,"  Hart  says, 
' '  he  regarded  as  a  mine  of  wealth."  Slab  after 
slab,  block  after  block,  he  split  from  its  seem- 
ingly inexhaustible  mass,  fashioning  it  swiftly, 
even  roughly,  into  wonderfully  resonant  violin 
bellies.  The  wood  was  by  no  means  perfect, 
according  to  the  fastidious  requirements  of  most 
makers,  having  a  large  sap-mark  through  the 
centre,  — a  sap-mark  which  leaves  its  stain  across 
many  of  his  finest  fiddles.  His  work  was  abso- 
lutely unscientific  ;  that  is,  he  trusted  to  nothing 
save  his  instinct  and  genius,  and  rarely, 
unless  for  some  special  commission,  took  the 
trouble  to  finish  any  of  his  instruments  even 
smoothly.     He  had  no  designs,  no  models,  no 

[257] 


Og>  The  Heart  of  Music  ^>> 

devices  to  insure  accuracy,  no  help  from  any 
external  or  secondary  sources.  Most  of  them  he 
sold  for  small  sums,  to  support  himself  or  to 
spend  in  drinking  and  gambling. 

He  was  a  born  adventurer,  more  markedly  and 
even  viciously  so,  — if  w^e  are  to  believe  report,  — 
than  any  of  his  roving  family.  Carlo  Bergonzi's 
grandson  gives  us  most  of  our  information  in 
this  connection,  and  his  judgment  and  report 
may  have  been  coloured  by  some  personal  influ- 
ence ;  but  however  many  grains  of  salt  one 
scatters  upon  the  testimony,  it  is  hard  not  to 
believe  this  much,  —  that  Guarnerius  was  a  gay 
and  unscrupulous  spendthrift,  fonder  of  pretty 
women  than  church-going,  and  of  red  wine  than 
domesticity.  He  married  a  quiet  Tyrolese  girl, 
who  did  not  complain  when  he  spent  the  night 
in  the  wineshop,  and  who  helped  him  with 
his  work  as  well  as  she  could — mixing  glue 
and  varnish,  sorting  and  cleaning  tools,  and 
keeping  careful  guard  over  his  completed 
masterpieces. 

Work  was  so  easy  to  Guarnerius  that  he  did 
not  have  the  anchor  which  ambition  and  industry 
give  to  many  a  man  of  his  temperament.  Violins 
grew  under  his  hands  as  laughter  and  song  came 
to   his  lips,   and  why   should  he  keep  sober  or 

[258] 


«>  Guarnerius  <» 

virtuous  when  he  could  make  just  as  fine  instru- 
ments when  he  was  neither  ? 

They  say  that  Guarnerius  never  passed  a  girl 
without  a  smile,  and  never  a  pretty  one  without  a 
kiss — if  he  could  get  it.  Meanwhile  his  Tyro- 
lese  wife  sat  at  home  and  watched  the  gluepots. 

He  entered  a  religious  order  when  he  was 
very  young;  why,  no  one  can  guess,  unless,  as 
is  quite  likely,  the  order  were  of  some  peculiar 
political  influence  and  its  advantages  civil  rather 
than  religious.  His  holy  association  gave  him  at 
least  a  pretty  signature,  than  which  it  would  be 
difficult  to  conceive  anything  more  singularly  in- 
appropriate ,  —  Giuseppe  del  Gesii  I  After  his  name 
he  put  on  his  violin  tickets  the  sacred  monogram 
I  jj  S,  "Jesus  Hominum  Salvator,"  sometimes 
deciphered  also  as  "  In  hoc  signo  vinces." 

Either  through  his  religious  affiliation  or  because 
"  it  was  his  nature  to,"  Guarnerius  managed  to 
get  involved  in  political  trouble  of  a  serious 
nature.  Those  were  days  when  bail  and  bonds 
and  such  conveniences  were  not  at  the  disposal  of 
the  prisoner  at  the  bar,  and  when,  moreover, 
offences  which  we  consider  hardly  worthy  a  news- 
paper notice  were  punishable  by  imprisonment, 
land  confiscation,  or  death.  It  is  only  fair  to  add 
that    some  of  our  present-day  capital  sins  were 


@rx^  The  Heart  of  Music  <!<> 

thought  quite  en  regie  then  ;  but  that  is  neither 
here  nor  there. 

Guarnerius  was  put  in  prison,  and  our  imagi- 
nations must  decide  for  each  of  us  what  became 
of  the  Tyrolese  wife.  Perhaps  she  died,  or  per- 
haps she  went  home  to  her  mountains,  or  perhaps 
she  sat  among  the  dried-up  gluepots  and  waited 
for  him  to  come  back.  She  seems  to  have  been 
a  quiet  person,  one  hears  so  httle  of  her. 

Guarnerius  was  not  happy  in  prison.  He  was 
uncomfortable,  hungry,  and  cold,  for  prisoners 
were  lodged  wretchedly  then.  Moreover,  he 
chafed  under  the  weight  of  his  confinement.  The 
very  essence  of  his  life  had  been  freedom  ;  he  was 
more  desperate  than  ever  was  wild  bird  newly 
caught  in  a  cage  too  small  for  it,  for  he  had  not 
even  that  dumb  philosophy  of  resignation  which 
birds  and  beasts  learn  in  suffering.  He  could  not 
forget  and  grow  accustomed  to  dreariness.  His 
brain  leaped  and  throbbed  and  clamoured  for  the 
life  that  his  whole  temperament  so  superbly  fitted 
him  to  enjoy  to  its  full  measure,  — good  and  bad 
alike. 

The  Gaoler  had  a  daughter,  and  she  fell  in  love 
with  Guarnerius.  The  details  of  this  strange  little 
romance  are  not  known,  but  in  its  very  outline  it 
makes  an  odd  sort  of  appeal  to  one's  sympathies  ; 

[260] 


<M>  Guarnerius  KK> 

Guarnerius,  pacing  the  floor  and  storming  against 
the  discomforts  and  indignity  of  his  condition, 
his  splendid  vitaHt J  and  fabulous  charm undimmed 
by  the  misery  of  his  state  ;  the  girl  watching  him 
anxiously,  shyly  tiptoeing  in  to  bring  him  some 
cheap  dainty,  or  to  offer  him  such  wistful  comfort 
as  she  might. 

It  ended  in  the  determination  of  Guarnerius  to 
make  fiddles  again .  Not  only  would  it  give  him 
occupation,  but  he  could  sell  them,  — or  rather  the 
Gaoler's  Daughter  could  sell  them  for  him,  —  and 
with  the  money  he  could  obtain  comfortable 
bedding,  decent  food,  and  an  occasional  flask  of 
wine.  But  how  to  get  the  materials  ?  His  brain 
could  devise  no  way,  but  the  Gaoler's  Daughter 
—  well,  the  Gaoler's  Daughter  was  in  love.  She 
went  on  a  begging  expedition  among  all  the  violin 
makers  of  the  city.  She  was  fired  to  inspiration 
by  her  passion  and  her  eagerness,  and  from  no 
workshop  did  she  come  empty-handed.  Every 
maker  contributed  something  after  hearing  her 
story, — so  fervently,  desperately  told.  One 
gave  one  tool,  and  one  another,  none  new,  nor 
of  the  best,  — the  sort  that  were  laid  aside  in  the 
shops,  but  not  thrown  away.  One  generous  man 
gave  her  a  quantity  of  red  pine ,  rather  badly  flawed ; 
another,    even   more    charitable,    relinquished   a 

[261] 


<3sO  The  Heart  of  Music  <K® 

pot  of  varnish  which  had  turned  out  wrong. 
With  stray  contributions  of  cracked  maple  strips 
and  imperfect  strings  she  contrived,  after  some 
days,  to  get  together  enough  in  the  way  of 
viohn-making  materials  to  carry  to  her  lover. 

She  got  them,  bit  by  bit,  into  the  cell,  with  the 
utmost  secrecy,  and  so  work  began.  Guarnerius 
groaned  aloud  as  he  looked  at  the  crude  stuff  before 
him,  and  thought  of  his  great  musical  block  of 
pinewood.  But  he  laughed  afterward,  and  kissed 
the  Gaoler's  Daughter,  and  set  to  work  without 
any  further  complaint. 

Bad  as  his  materials  and  tools  were,  he  made 
some  fine  instruments,  in  his  own  splendid, 
vigorous  style,  paying  no  attention  to  polish  nor 
neatness,  but  wringing  some  resonant  sweetness 
of  vibration  out  of  even  the  flawed  red  pine  that 
the  Gaoler's  Daughter  had  brought  him.  Some 
of  these  instruments  are  still  in  existence.  They 
call  them  the  *' Prison  Josephs."  When  the 
violins  were  finished  (how  many  vivid  dreams,  I 
wonder,  were  shut  into  them,  there  in  the  dim 
prison  cell  where  the  master  made  them?)  the 
Gaoler's  Daughter  took  them  and  carried  them  to 
dealers,  to  private  individuals  artistically  inclined, 
and  to  musicians.  When  these  failed  she  hawked 
them  about  the  streets,  and  thus  sold  them  all. 

[262] 


®»  Guornorlus  <» 

And  she  bought  food  and  wine  with  the  pro- 
ceeds, and  some  few  better  materials  for  lier 
fiddle  maker,  and  so  went  back  to  the  prison. 
That  is  the  story  of  the  famous  "  Prison  Josephs." 
I  do  not  say  it  is  the  history,  for  no  man  knows 
the  truth  of  it — only  the  high  gods  and  tlie  soul 
of  the  Gaoler's  Daughter. 

It  was  after  the  prison  episode,  when  Guarnerlus 
was  once  more  free,  that  he  made  his  great 
"Violin  du  Diable,"  supposed  to  have  super- 
natural powers,  and  also  his  historic  "Cannon," 
which  later  was  so  dearly  loved  and  prized  by 
Paganini. 

The  story  is  told  that  once  the  "  Cannon"  was 
ill — out  of  sorts  —  indisposed  —  what  you  will. 
Paganini  sent  for  the  violin  mender,  who  found 
himself  obliged  to  separate  the  belly  from  the 
sides.  When  the  knife  was  inserted  the  whole 
instrument  vibrated  so  violently  tliat  the  strings 
emitted  a  harsh  cord  that  sounded  hke  a  moan. 
Paganini  was  so  moved  and  distressed  at  what 
seemed  to  be  the  suffering  of  his  beloved  instru- 
ment that  he  cried  out  in  agony,  and  then  fainted 
away. 

Fleming  declares  that  the  "Cannon"  should 
silence  those  who,  like  Bergonzi,  have  tried  to 
hurt  the  memory  of  the  Maestro  ;  and  I,  for  one, 

[•iG3] 


<X>  The  Heart  of  Music  <^> 

should  be  glad  to  believe  that  this  superb  instru- 
ment does  indeed  cry  with  the  voice  of  truth  in 
defence  of  Guarnerius.  And  after  all,  w^hat  is  the 
worst  we  know  of  him  ?  A  little  recklessness  ;  a 
love  of  gay  company,  mellow  wine,  and  women's 
lips  ;  a  fine  unrest  with  money  in  his  pocket ;  no 
great  domestic  virtues,  and  a  prodigal,  opulent 
genius  for  making  things  that  could  sing  1 

He  was  only  sixty-two  when  he  died,  and  he 
had  contrived  to  be  better  and  oftener  loved  than 
is  the  fate  of  most  men,  and  to  have  made  violins 
that  only  one  maker  ever  surpassed. 

So  we  take  you  at  the  "  Cannon's"  valuation, 
Guarnerius,  and  let  its  incomparable  music  ex- 
plain to  us,  in  divinest  sympathy  and  noblest 
justification,  the  things  we  might  not  otherwise 
quite  understand. 


[264] 


ofie  oToadtet 


'  The  instrument  on  which  he  played 
\A  as  in  Cremona's  workshop  made 
By  a  great  master  of  the  past 
Ere  yet  was  lost  the  art  divine ; 
Fashioned  of  maple  and  of  pine 
That  in  Tyrolean  forests  vast 
Had  rocked  and  wrestled  with  the  blast ; 
Exquisite  was  it  in  design, 
A  marvel  of  the  lutist's  art, 
Perfect  in  each  minutest  part ; 
And,  in  its  hollow  chamber,  thus 
The  maker  from  whose  hands  it  came 
Had  written  his  unrivalled  name  — 
'  Antonius  Stradivarius.'  " 

H.  W.  Longfellow. 


XVIII.— The  Master 


Antonio  stradi\  ari  was  bom  sometime 

about  the  year  i65o.  The  disparity  in  the  dates 
of  his  birth  as  given  by  different  authorities  is 
rather  surprising  apphed  to  a  man  of  so  much 
historical  importance,  and  one  to  whose  life  so 
much  pubHcity  has  been  given. 

The  years  i6/l/i,  16/49,  ^"^  i66/i  have  all  been 
accepted,  at  various  periods,  as  the  authentic  date 
of  the  great  man's  entrance  into  the  world.  Count 
Cozio  de  Salabue  and  Mr.  Wiener,  both  of  whom 
owned  dated  Stradivaris,  containing  also  the 
maker's  age  in  both  cases,  did  much  toward  setting 
the  incomprehensible  error  straight,  as  did  Fetis, 
a  most  sedulous  worker  and  searcher,  though 
constantly  inaccurate,  and  W.  E.  Hill,  a  genuine 
and  authoritatively  informed  student  of  the 
subject. 

The  name  Stradivari  dates  back,  some  persons 
say,  to  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century,  but 
the  most  conservative  authorities  declare  that  the 
earliest  record  of  the  family  is  dated  12 13.  Its 
most  eminent  men  before  Antonio  seem  to  have 
been   Galerio    and   Alessandro    Stradivari   (i33o 

[267] 


er:®>  The  Heart  of  Music  ^x^ 

and  i^oo),  who  were  both  OrientaUsts,  and  Fra 
Costanzo,  a  monk  of  the  order  of  the  UmiKati, 
who  made  a  specialty  of  Aristotle's  philosophy 
early  in  the  fifteenth  century. 

The  name  Stradivari  is  the  plural  form  of 
Stradivare,  the  Lombard  variation  of  Stradiere, 
from  Stratiarius,  which  meant  a  douanier,  or 
toll-gatherer,  such  as  were  stationed  on  the  Stradi 
or  highroads  for  the  purpose  of  levying  road-taxes 
from  passers-by.  The  office  was  a  feudal  one, 
and  in  itself  alone  shows  the  antiquity  of  the 
house,  though  it  marks  no  suggestion  of  nobility 
of  birth  or  even  of  distinguished  position. 

They  were  commonplace  burgher-folk  enough, 
the  Stradivari  ;  and  who  could  have  guessed  that 
such  a  simple  pair  as  Alessandro  Stradivari,  the 
citizen,  and  Anna  Moroni,  his  good  housewife, 
could  have,  by  any  queer  freak  of  fate,  chance,  or 
heredity,  become  the  parents  of  one  of  the  world's 
most  unchallenged  geniuses?  One  wonders  if 
they  felt  premonitions  of  his  greatness,  and  were 
disturbed  thereby,  when  he  was  still  a  laughing 
baby  with  no  higher  aims  than  milk  and  warmth 
and  the  cradling  motion  that  puts  one  to  sleep  if 
one  is  little. 

Of  many  violin  makers  we  may  say  ' '  He  was 
a  master,"  but  of  Stradivari  alone  we  can  declare 

[268] 


<)s>  The  Master  *» 

"  He  is  the  Master.  "  Other  men  were  unusual  ; 
he  was  unique.  Other  men  had  talent,  more  or 
less  resplendent  ;  he  had  genius — the  genius  that 
permits  of  neither  classification  nor  qualification, 
the  genius  that  requires  no  statements,  no  expla- 
nation, no  description,  ahove  all,  no  adjectives. 

TiefTenbriicker  was  a  past  master  in  finish  and 
delicacy  of  ornamental  work  ;  Stainer  had  an  in- 
stinct for  wonderful  woods  ;  Gasparo  da  Salo  had 
big  inventive  brains  and  daring  hands  ;  Magglni 
had  industry  and  a  fund  of  creative  variety  ; 
Dardelli  poured  love  into  his  instruments;  Zanetto 
gave  them  the  study  of  all  his  days ;  the  Amatis 
excelled  in  warm-hued  varnishes,  exquisite  pur- 
fling,  and  angelic  sweetness  of  tone;  Guarnerius 
was  a  magician  in  producing  resonant,  full,  echoing 
music.  All  the  early  makers  had,  in  their  several 
ways,  rare  gifts  calculated  to  place  them  high  in 
the  aristocracy  of  fiddle-making  ;  but  above  them 
stands  the  King,  —  gaunt,  tall,  determined,  fer- 
vent, indefatigable,  gentle,  inspired,  lie  it  was 
who  combined  the  Gasparos  big  plunges  into 
progress  and  innovation  with  TiefT'enbriicker's 
minute  concentration  upon  a  single  flowing  line  ; 
who  welded  the  musical  instinct  of  Stainer  with 
the  pedantic  accuracy  of  Zanetto  and  Magglni, 
and  the  careful  finish  of  the  Amatis  with  the  free 

[269] 


KKp  The  Heart  of  Music  CCs' 

fearlessness  of  Guarnerius.  He  it  was  who  had 
no  more  need  to  work  than  Giuseppe  del  Gesii, 
being  fired  by  a  far  brighter,  whiter  flame,  yet 
who  spent  all  his  long  life  in  studious  toil,  going 
humbly  as  a  little  child  to  the  service  of  the  art 
which  he,  and  he  only,  had  perfected,  passing  his 
predecessors  quietly  upon  the  road,  yet  never 
taking  his  clear  eyes  from  the  angel  that  inspired 
him  ;  never  pausing,  never  permitting  his  brain 
to  lag,  his  body  to  grow  weary,  or  his  heart  to  be- 
come satisfied.  Only  the  very  great  can  achieve 
such  simplicity  in  attainment  as  that  of  Stradivari. 
Only  the  very  high  can  afford  to  walk  in  such  a 
lowly  path  of  humble  effort.  Only  the  children 
of  the  gods  may  be  so  innocently  human  and  so 
divinely  commonplace. 

Some  persons  insist  that  Antonio  did  not  enter 
Nicolo  Amati's  workshop  until  he  was  eighteen, 
but  the  general  consensus  of  belief  points  to  his 
having  been  apprenticed  to  the  veteran  when  he 
was  not  more  than  fourteen.  "There  in  the 
workshop,"  says  Olga  Racster,  "he  worked  side 
by  side  with  the  more  sober  Andrea  Guarnieri." 

As  we  have  indicated  in  an  earlier  chapter,  his 
work  was  so  brilliant  that  long  before  he  was 
free  from  his  apprenticeship  he  was  making  so- 
called    "  Amati  Violins,"    which    were    sold   in 

[270] 


«®  The  Master  ^X> 

Cremona  and  elsewhere  under  the  name  of  the 
Maestro.  He  was  a  tall,  earnest,  one-ideaed 
lad,  very  natural  and  simple,  and  absolutely 
untiring  in  his  work,  and  once  in  a  while  old 
Nicolo  would  stare  at  him  for  a  time  as  though 
puzzled,  then  shake  his  head,  and  turn  away 
muttering  something  unintelligible. 

His  fellow-students  looked  at  him  and  at  his 
work  with  open  wonder.  How  did  he  know 
how  to  insert  purfling  and  join  pieces  almost 
before  the  Maestro  told  him  ?  How  did  he  guess 
the  exact  balance  of  steaming  ingredients  in 
making  a  varnish,  and  why  was  his  instinct  so 
unerring  in  choosing  a  bit  of  wood  for  sound- 
post  or  bridge?  Often  Antonio  would  fling  half 
a  dozen  scraps  of  pine  and  maple  across  the 
room  against  the  wall,  his  face  set  with  attention 
and  concentration  the  while,  as,  with  half-closed 
eyes,  he  noted  the  pitch  of  each  as  it  struck.  At 
last  his  lips  would  light  up  with  a  smile  and  he 
would  run  forward  searching  for  the  approved 
fragment.  "  Listen  to  this,  Maestro  I  This  is  the 
piece  you  want!  " 

When  Antonio  was  seventeen  he  fell  in  love. 
That  in  itself  was  quite  harmless  and  not  at  all 
unusual ;  even  the  fact  that  it  was  for  a  woman 
ten  years  older  than  himself,  and  a  widow  into 

[271] 


<>>  The  Heart  of  Music  «> 

the  bargain,  only  proves  Antonio  to  have  in  no 
way  escaped  the  sentimental  traditions  of  eighteen- 
year-old  masculinity.  But  what  did  place  his 
romance  on  a  rather  peculiar  footing  was  that  he 
was  not  satisfied  to  adore  the  lady  from  afar,  and 
break  his  heart  over  her  from  a  safe  distance,  but 
was  firmly  determined  to  marry  her. 

Francesca  Gapra  was  a  beautiful  woman,  still 
young,  and  with  the  added  charm  of  a  tragic 
story  to  render  her  doubly  irresistible  in  male 
eyes.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Francesca 
Ferabosca, — sometimes  spelled  Ferraboschi, — 
and  at  twenty-three  had  married  Giovanna 
Giocomo  Capra,  Avith  whom  she  lived  contentedly 
enough  for  tw  o  years ,  and  to  whom  she  bore  one 
baby  girl, — Susanna.  In  i664  Capra  was  as- 
sassinated by  an  arquebus  ball  while  walking  in 
the  Piazza  Santa  Legata.  The  story  is  a  long 
one,  and  not  any  too  lucid,  after  its  hundred 
garbled  accounts.  Francesca  went  home  to  the 
Ferabosca  roof-tree  with  her  baby,  and  there 
lived,  a  very  pathetic  and  inconsolable  widow, 
until  the  tall  lad  from  Maestro  Amati's  work- 
shop chanced  to  look  up  toward  her  balcony  as 
he  passed  by,  and  then  stopped  to  speak  to  tiny 
Susanna  crowing  in  the  sun. 

The  love  affair  was  one  of  those  swift,   sum- 

[272] 


«»  The  Master  ®^^» 

mer  fostered  lliings,  that  i^y  liko  flames  through 
the  most  humdrum  Hvcs.  It  re(|uirod  hut  few 
magical  nights  under  the  proverhiallj  intoxicat- 
ing moon  of  Italy,  hut  half  a  dozen  eager  ques- 
tions and  hurried  answers,  hut  a  fragment  of 
courtship,  a  gHmmer  of  hope,  a  swift  brush  of 
determination,  and  the  thing  was  done. 

Francesca,  wide-eyed  at  the  notion  of  giving 
up  her  role  of  weeping  young  Madonna,  found 
herself  unaccountably  wooed  off  her  feet.  Her 
widow's  veil  was  ruthlessly  torn  off,  her  soft 
breast  was  loaded  with  smiling  flowers,  she  was 
ordered  to  sing  love  songs  again,  and  learn  the 
wisdom  of  gaiety  from  her  baby.  In  short, 
young  Stradivari  conquered  unconditionally, 
and  lost  not  the  slightest  time  in  carrying  olT  his 
conquest. 

He  was  less  than  eighteen  when  on  July  /i, 
1667,  the  good  Padre  Pietro  Guallo,  parish  priest 
of  the  "  Collegiate  and  Renowned  Church  of 
Santa  Agata  in  Cremona"  —  so  runs  the  register 
—  married  this  curiously  assorted  but  radiantly 
happy  couple.  Francesca  wore  the  brightest  and 
richest  gown  she  could  buy  in  the  town, — and 
her  purse  left  her  quite  free  to  choose  what  she 
liked,  too, — and  Susanna  laughed  all  through 
the  ceremony. 

[.73] 


<jg>  The  Heart  of  Music  <©> 

It  was  not  very  long  before  Susanna  had  a  small 
stepsister,  Giulia,  born  during  the  winter  follow- 
ing that  most  ill-advised  but  immensely  successful 
wedding  at  St.  Agatha's.  In  all,  Stradivari  and 
Francesca  had  six  children, — one  of  whom,  the 
first  boy,  died  in  babyhood.  His  name  was 
Francesco,  after  his  mother,  and  Stradivari  in- 
sisted on  calling  the  next  boy  by  the  same  name, 
as  a  matter  of  sentiment. 

Meanwhile  Stradivari  still  worked  with  his  mas- 
ter, Amati,  and  still  made  no  attempt  to  win  any 
personal  fame.  He  finished  many  of  Nicolo's  in- 
struments as  he  had  been  wont  to  do  as  a  mere 
boy  in  the  workshop,  and  allowed  very  few  violins 
to  go  out  into  the  world  bearing  his  own  signa- 
ture. These  few  specimens  of  an  obscure  and 
little  covered  period  in  Stradivari's  life  of  pro- 
duction are  very  rare,  and  have  only  been  seen 
by  a  limited  number  of  persons,  though  they  are 
known  to  exist. 

In  1679  the  faithful  follower  and  student  had 
his  reward.  Nicolo  Amati  retired  from  all  active 
participation  in  the  work  of  fiddle-making,  and 
at  his  wish  Stradivari  took  his  place,  not  only 
carrying  out  the  ambitions  and  undertakings  of 
the  veteran  on  a  scale  which  would  have  been 
impossible  even  to  a    Nicolo  Amati,   but   estab- 

[274] 


©:>>  Tlio  Maslcr  <»> 

llshing  his  own  ropiilallun  and  standard  on  a  new 
and  incomparable  basis. 

His  Avife  s  money  and  what  he  himself  was 
able  to  save  during  the  very  first  year  of  his 
independent  work  enabled  him  to  buy  a  house, 
No.  I  Piazza  San  Domenico.  It  liad  three  floors 
and  ample  cellars,  a  big  courtyard  at  the  back, 
and  on  the  top  of  the  house  a  sort  of  covered 
terrace,  full  of  sun  and  air,  which  the  Cremonese 
called  the  "Seccadoni,"  or  drying-place,  and 
which  the  townswomen  were  accustomed  to  use 
for  the  drying  of  linen  after  the  wash,  as  well 
as  for  the  drying  and  preparing  of  herbs  and 
fruits.  This  primitive  sort  of  solarium  Stradivari 
promptly  annexed  as  his  workroom,  and  filled 
with  tools,  cabinets,  tables,  shelves,  chests,  and  a 
boiling  apparatus. 

Here,  arrayed  in  his  historic  garb, — a  white 
leather  apron,  and  a  white  cap  made  of  linen  in 
summer  and  of  wool  in  winter, — he  spent  long, 
peaceful  days,  with  the  wind  blowmg  m,  clean 
and  cool,  above  the  defilement  of  cities;  straight 
as  sunlight  it  shot  from  the  blue  mountains  just 
over  the  way.  Here  he  made  his  first  wonderful 
fiddles,  growing  gaunter,  and  longer,  and  leaner 
year  by  year,  but  never  tired,  never  sad,  and 
never  losing  the  wholesome  human  sunniness  that 

[270] 


<<3?>  The  Heart  of  Music  ©» 

had  brought  summer  into  Francesca's  chilled 
heart,  and  that  made  his  violins  sing  not  only 
like  birds,   but  like  living  things  with  souls. 

People  rarely  saw  him  at  work,  for  he  loved 
to  be  undisturbed.  It  was  no  jealousy  of  genius 
that  made  him  shut  the  doors  of  his  Seccadoni. 
No  man  was  ever  far  from  the  pettiness  of  great- 
ness. Even  his  formula  for  varnish  was  scribbled 
on  the  fly-leaf  of  the  family  Bible!  He  never 
guarded  it  with  any  great  care,  though  after  his 
death  the  Stradivari  family  fell  upon  it  and  re- 
fused to  let  anyone  that  w  as  unblessed  by  their 
sacred  name  even  glance  at  it. 

In  1698  Francesca  died,  after  thirty  years 
of  very  complete  happiness.  Stradivari  seemed 
almost  too  anxious  that  she  should  have  the  most 
impressive  burial  possible,  and  is  said  to  have 
paid  out  more  than  twenty  pounds  for  the  pur- 
pose, w^hich  was  considered  lavish  for  those  days, 
and  amazingly  so  for  him, — for  he  had  not 
the  miost  open-handed  reputation  in  Cremona. 
Among  the  items  on  the  bill  for  funeral  ex- 
penses we  find  fees  paid  to  fourteen  priests  and 
choir-boys,  over  one  hundred  fathers  of  different 
denominations;  also  the  "\elvet  and  Gold 
Pall  of  the  Cathedral";  also  "Grave-diggers 
with   Capes";    also  the    "Big  Bell,"  the  bells 

[276] 


<X>  The  Master  ®» 

of  St.  Matteo  and  St.  Domenico,  and  "  two  little 
bells  in  the  Cathedral." 

From  this  bill  Stradivari,  seriously  counting 
the  items,  while  Giulia  andCaterina,  his  daughters, 
were  clearing  away  flowers  and  preparing  supper, 
carefully  deducted  eight  lire,  which  he  consid- 
ered exorbitant  !  No  wonder  he  saved  money 
so  fast  that  the  Gremonese  townsfolk  had  a 
saying,  "  Ricco  come  Stradivari  (As  rich  as 
Stradivari)." 

His  children  were  devoted  to  him,  especially 
Caterina,  who,  like  Gaterina  Guarnieri  and  the 
Tyrolese  wife  of  Giuseppe  del  Gesu,  helped  ex- 
tensively in  the  workshop.  Not  the  least  loyal 
and  loving  member  of  his  family  was  Susanna 
Gapra,  his  stepdaughter,  whom  he  had  legally 
adopted.  She  was  not  quite  fourteen  years 
younger  than  himself,  and  they  were  the  best  of 
friends  and  comrades,  even  after  her  marriage  to 
Francesco  Luca. 

In  less  than  a  year  the  master,  having  satisfied 
his  conscience  by  according  poor  Francesca  the 
most  splendid  obsequies  and  a  number  of  mourn- 
ing months,  made  a  second  marriage,  almost  as 
sudden  and  unsuitable  as  the  first,  and  just  as 
unreasonably  successful.  He  was  then  forty-nine 
years  old,  and  he  married  Antonia  Zambelli,  who 

[277] 


®X«  The  Heart  of  Music  <®:^« 

was  almost  twenty  years  younger.  She  was  a 
very  pretty,  fresh  girl,  and  Stradivari  married  on 
the  twenty-fourth  of  August,  having  a  liking  for 
midsummer  weddings.  The  ceremony  took  place 
at  the  Church  of  San  Donato,  and  this  time  it  was 
the  bridegroom  instead  of  the  bride  who  left  the 
altar  with  the  elixir  of  youth  sparkling  in  his  eyes 
and  pulsing  in  his  breast.  Antonia  was  as  good 
as  she  was  pretty,  — less  romantic  and  passionate, 
perhaps,  than  the  pathetic  young  widow  whose 
melancholy  veil  and  melancholy  meditations  he 
had  destroyed  with  equal  ardour,  —  but  a  capable 
little  housewife,  who  adored  him  humbly  and 
bore  him  five  children  in  rapid  succession. 

In  all  Stradivari  had,  by  his  two  wives,  eleven 
children,  none  of  whom  achieved  any  particular 
distinction.  One  sympathises  with  the  French 
biographer,  Avho  gave  up  trying  to  write  the  life 
of  Stradivari,  declaring  that  it  was  all  summed 
up  in  three  words,    "Work  and  children!" 

By  this  time  Stradivari's  name  was  known  to 
all  the  artistic  world  of  his  day.  Kings  and 
princes  sent  to  the  modest  house  on  the  Piazza 
San  Domenico  commanding  violins.  The  master 
had  more  orders  than  he  could  fill,  though  he 
worked  incessantly.  James  II  of  England,  the 
King  of  Spain,  the  Grand  Duke  of  Florence,  and 

[278] 


®»  The  Master  «» 

many  other  great  persons  wanted  his  famous 
fiddles. 

In  i684  he  made  a  "Viola  da  Gamba  Alia 
Gobba  (Hunchbacked  Viol)  "  for  tlie  Contessa 
Ciistina  \isconti.  This  was  a  viol  with  the 
upper  part  of  the  back  sloped  in  a  curious  posi- 
tion. It  is  not  stated  in  the  records  why  the 
Contessa  Cristina  wanted  this  weird  instrument, 
or  why  Stradivari  made  it  for  her  if  she  did. 

One  thing  he  was  unchanging  and  unswerving 
in,  — the  necessity  that  what  he  undertook  should 
be  properly  and  fittingly  finished,  irrespective  of 
time,  tide,  and  the  haste  of  all  the  crowned  heads 
of  the  universe. 

"  Why  have  I  not  received  my  violin  ?"  some 
irate  and  impatient  noble  would  demand  by 
special  messenger. 

"Because,  your  worship,  it  is  not  finished," 
would  respond  the  white-capped,  white-aproned 
King  of  Violins,  in  pure  seriousness  and  simplicity 
of  soul. 

Once  he  wrote  tranquilly  to  a  particularly  irri- 
table potentate:  "I  would  have  sent  the  viohn 
to  your  highness,  but  saw  no  safe  method  of 
delivering  it.  I  have  now  induced  the  barefooted 
father,  San  Manro,  to  take  it  to  you." 

The  King  of  Spain,  at  the  end  of  what  little 

L279] 


^X^  The  Heart  of  Music  «^ 

patience  the  gods  had  blessed  him  with,  sent  a 
great  noble  of  his  court,  accompanied  by  servants 
and  men  at  arms,  to  Cremona,  with  a  peremptory 
letter  and  the  eighteenth  century  Italian  equiv- 
alent for   "Wait  for  an  answer." 

The  grandee  stayed  there  three  weeks. 

When  he  came  back  with  the  violin  he  said 
that  Messer  Stradivari  had  listened  to  him  quietly 
when  he  declared  that  his  royal  master  desired 
him  to  wait  until  the  violin  was  ready  to  carry 
back.  "  Wait  then,"  he  remarked,  and  went  on 
with  his  work.  So  he  had  waited.  And  it  had 
been  three  weeks. 

Some  of  the  most  famous  of  Stradivari's  violins 
are  known  on  the  market  under  the  following 
names  : 

1690  The  "  Tuscan  Strad."  Made  for  the 
Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany.  After  passing  through 
many  hands  it  finally  reached  those  of  Mr.  Hill  in 
London.  The  ornamentation  and  the  work  on  the 
scroll  are  particularly  fine,  —  rather  more  ornate 
than  most  of  the  master's  work.  Joachim  coveted 
this  violin  for  years. 

171 1  The  "  Parke." 

1712  The  "  Yiotti." 

1 713  The  "  Boissier,"  once  belonging  to 
Sarasate. 

[280] 


«C<:^  The  Master  CO 

171/i  The  "Dolphin.'  It  gained  its  name 
from  its  pecuHar  iridescent  varnish,  and  belonged 
for  years  to  Sarasate's  master,  Alard. 

1715    The   "  Gillot,"  belonging  lo  Mr.  Gillot. 

17 15  The  "Alard,"  in  possession  of  Baron 
Knoop . 

1715  Three  violins  belonging  to  Joachim. 

1 716  The  "Gesoli."  It  once  belonged  to 
Felix,  then  to  Arlot,  and  finally  to  Count  Gesole. 

1 717  The  "  Sasseron." 

17 18  The  "  Maurin." 

Besides  these  there  are  the  three  most  celebrated 
instruments  of  all:  The  "Rode"  (1722),  the 
"  Messie,"   and  the   "Pucelle." 

The  "Rode"  is  ornamented  in  the  most 
delicately  elaborate  manner,  the  ribs  outlined 
with  black  and  the  purfling  inlaid  with  ivory 
and  mother  of  pearl.  There  are  very  few  instru- 
ments in  existence  which  for  sheer  beauty  can 
touch  the  "Rode."  Its  market  value  has  risen 
in  the  last  few  years  from  one  hundred  and  sixty 
pounds  to  twelve  thousand  pounds  !  The  usual 
price  for  "  Strads  "  is  five  hundred  pounds,  or 
twenty-five  hundred  dollars. 

The  "Messie"  or  "  Messiale  "  (1716)  has  a 
long  and  romantic  history.  It  was  silent  for  one 
hundred  and  forty-seven  years,  and  when  it  was 

[281] 


<^>  The  Heart  of  Music  <;<^ 

found  in  the  room  of  the  vagabond  Luigi  Tarisio, 
after  his  death,  it  had  never  been  touched  bj  a 
bow.  Tarisio  was  a  strange,  quaint  character, 
who  possessed  nothing  in  the  world  but  viohns, 
—  most  of  which  he  had  stolen  or  gotten  through 
some  nefarious  scheme.  We  owe  him  some  of 
the  rarest  fiddles  ever  put  on  the  market. 

The  "  Pucelle  "  was  made  in  1709,  and  is  now 
in  the  possession  of  the  family  of  Glandej.  It 
is  valued  at  nine  hundred  pounds.  The  naive 
historian  in  chronicling  the  works  of  Stradivari 
gives  this  delicious  explanation  :  ' '  The  violin  is 
called  the  '  Pucelle  '  —  the  Maid  —  because  of  its 
perfect  state  of  preservation  ! " 

Stradivari  worked  on,  year  by  year,  contented 
to  work,  contented  with  each  sun  that  rose  and 
each  dusk  that  stole  darkly  down  the  Piazza  to 
the  accompaniment  of  tinkling  mandolins  and 
lutes.  He  taught  musical  lads  and  men  such 
essentials  of  his  craft  as  could  be  taught,  and 
loved  even  that  part  of  his  appointed  work. 
Nothing  really  disturbed  his  quiet  golden  days. 

When  in  1702  the  city  was  taken  by  Marshal 
Yilleroy,  of  the  Imperialist  party,  and  retaken  by 
Prince  Eugene,  and  then  retaken  a  third  time  by 
the  French,  Stradivari  raised  his  head  from  the 
willow  branches  fresh  cut  on  the  banks  of  the 

[282] 


®»  The  Master  ^jO» 

River  Po  —  he  ahvajs  used  this  willow-wood  for 
the  inner  framework,  the  blocks  and  liniri"-  of  his 
violins  —  and  said,  "There  seem  to  he  several 
battles  this  year."      Then  he  went  on  working 

He  smiled  indul«rently  on  gossip,  —  did  not 
resent  particularly  the  "  Rlcco  come  Stradivari," 
though  he  knew  that  with  eleven  children  it  was 
bound  to  be  more  ironic  than  truthful,  and  he 
took  small  interest  in  the  report  that  the  sweetness 
of  his  tone  was  caused  by  his  varnishing  the 
inside  of  his  instrument  Avith  a  varnish  made  from 
the  wax  of  honeybees.  He  neither  admitted  things 
nor  denied  them.  Even  if  he  had  lived  in  an  age 
of  newspapers,  he  would  never  have  been  induced 
to  rush  into  print. 

In  March,  1787,  his  wife  Antonia  died.  Her 
loss  grieved  the  master,  but  at  his  age  death 
means  no  great  parting  after  all. 

"  It  is  not  for  long,"  he  told  her. 

And  nine  months  later,  in  December,  he 
followed  her. 

The  parish  record  of  his  death  in  the  register 
of  San  Matteo  is  as  follows  : 

"In  the  year  of  our  Lord  one  thousand  seven 
hundred  and  thirty-seven,  on  the  nineteenth  day 
of  the  month  of  December,  Signor  Antonio  Stradi- 
vari, a  widower  aged  about  ninety-five  years,  having 

[u83] 


<»  The  Heart  of  Music  <i^ 

died  yesterday,  fortified  by  the  Holy  Sacraments, 
and  comforted  by  prayers  for  his  soul  until  the 
moment  he  expired,  I,  Domenico  Antonio  Stan- 
cari.  Parish  Priest  of  this  Church  of  San  Matteo, 
have  escorted  this  day  his  corpse  with  funeral  pomp 
to  the  Church  of  the  \ery  Reverend  Fathers  of  San 
Domenico  in  Cremona,  where  he  was  buried.  " 

Years  afterward ,  when  they  really  began  to  appre- 
ciate something  of  the  greatness  of  the  simple  man 
who  had  lived  among  them  for  nearly  a  century, 
the  Cremonese  folk  fastened  a  tablet  on  the  house 
which  had  been  built  on  the  site  of  his  old  home  : 

"Here  Stood  the  House 

IN    WHICH 

Antonio  Stradivari 

Brought  the  Violin  to  its  Highest  Perpectigh, 

AND  Left  to  Cremona 

AN  Imperishable  Name  as  a 

Master  of  His  Craft." 

What  a  splendid  figure  he  is,  to  be  sure,  this 
aged  artist,  this  venerable  artisan,  this  ninety- 
five-year-old  man  of  work !  Other  men  try  to 
hide  their  age ;  Stradivari  was  childishly  proud 
of  his.  On  his  priceless  labels  he  used  to  put, 
after  the  immortal  "  Antonius  Stradivarius 
Cremonensis  "  his  age, — eighty,  or  eighty-five, 
or  ninety,  —  as  much  as  to  say  ' '  This  is  what  the 
\  eteran  of  Veterans  can  do  !  " 

[284] 


«X^  The  Master  <)»> 

George  Eliot  paid  him  fine  tribute  when  she 
wrote  of  Naldo,  the  painter,  that  he  was  one 

"  Knowing  all  tricks  of  style  at  thirty-one, 
And  weary  of  them  ;  while  Antonio 
At  sixty-nine  wrought  placidly  his  best." 

She  made  a  rarely  strong  and  beautiful  picture 
of  the  master,  also,  in  her  description  of  him  as 

•'That  plain,  white  aproned  man,  who  stood  at  work, 
Patient  and  accurate,  full  four-score  years ; 
Cherished  his  sight  and  touch  by  temperance, 
And,  since  keen  sense  is  love  of  perfectness. 
Made  perfect  violins,  —  the  needed  paths 
For  inspiration  and  high  mastery." 

Where  they  buried  him  there  is  now  no  tomb 
to  which  passionate  violin  lovers  may  make 
pilgrimages,  or  students  of  history  go  to  dream 
and  meditate .  But  remembering  his  warm  kindli- 
ness and  human  simpUcity,  we  cannot  resent  the 
fact  that  his  resting-place  should  be  marked  by  a 
public  garden,  where  children  play  all  day  and 
the  sun  shines  and  the  birds  sing.  On  a  vase  in 
the  heart  of  it  is  just  this  little  inscription  : 

"  Here,  where  formerly  stood  The  Convent  and 

Church  of  the  Domenican  Inquisitors, 

The  Town  Council 

HAVE    provided 

A    PLEASANT    PROSPECT    OF 

TREES    AND    FLOWERS." 


[a85] 


(jlie  One  Perfect   fixing 


'•  Years  ago  (It  is  said)  there  lived  in  Bremen  a  ■SAatch-maker,  whose 
fame  was  universal,  for  his  watches  Avere  the  most  perfect  in  the  world. 
No  one  could  discover  the  secret  of  his  pre-eminence.  At  last  he 
sickened  and  died,  and  the  secret  was  revealed,  for  his  watches  stopped 
one  by  one  ;  he  had  wrought  a  little  of  his  own  soul  into  each  time- 
piece,  and  when  he  died  —  they  died  also ! 

"So  it  is  with  the  Fiddle-^^aker  ;  his  whole  soul  is  put  into  his  work 
—  but  his  work  does  not  die  with  him,  it  lives,  divinely  sweet,  till 
sheer  old  age  crumbles  it  away,  till  long  after  his  grandchildren's 
grandchildren  have  lived  out  their  allotted  three-score  years  and  ten, 
in  blissful  ignorance  of  their  ancestor  who   'made  fiddles.'" 

Edward  Heron- Allen. 


gC0!>^XXXX>v^'^CC®C*C^t^®v^C®C*C^O^ 


XIX.  —The  One  Porfccl  Thing 


IT  was  once  stated  by  a  very  wise  and  learned 
man  :  ' '  There  are  only  three  jperfect  things  in 
the  world,  — the  bow  and  arrow,  the  boomerang, 
and  the  Aiolin";  only  three  things,  the  wise 
man  proceeded  to  explain,  upon  which  no  im- 
provement could  be  made,  and  for  which  no 
further  stage  of  progressive  development  would 
be  possible.  He  contended  —  thiswise  man  — 
that,  among  all  the  mechanical  contrivances  of 
the  world,  all  the  artistic  creations  and  utilitarian 
inventions,  all  the  flower  and  fruit  of  ages  of 
research  and  evolution,  these  three  things  alone 
had  reached  their  completed  form,  and  could  not, 
by  any  twist  of  scientist's  or  artisan's  brains,  by 
any  eff'ort  after  ingenious  betterment,  be  pushed 
one  inch  farther  on  the  pathway  of  evolution. 

Now  to  this  wise  man  there  came  yet  another 
wise  man,  who  pointed  out  that  the  bow  and 
arrow  was  not  a  perfect  thing,  since  it  could  be 
made  to-day  in  steel,  or  other  flexible  metals, 
and  gain  threefold  in  power  and  efficacy. 

"  That  is  true,"  said  the  first  wise  man,  "but 
though    you    may   alter   the   materials,  the  form 

[289] 


«>  The  Heart  of  Music  <¥> 

would  remain  the  same.  The  shape,  operation, 
and  principle  of  the  bow  and  arrow  are  perfect,  so 
my  point  stays  unchanged.'* 

Nevertheless,  since  so  warm  a  controversy  arose 
from  this,  we  will  follow  the  legal  fashion  of 
refusing  evidence  that  is  not  ' '  proved  beyond 
the  possibility  of  a  reasonable  doubt"  and 
discard  the  bow^  and  arrow  from  our  perfect 
trio.  Remains  to  us  the  boomerang  and  the 
violin. 

Now  the  boomerang,  as  a  perfect  scientific, 
mechanical,  and  utilitarian  demonstration  of  ex- 
traordinary natural  phenomenon,  — which  is  one 
way  of  saying  natural  law,  —  is  unexceptionable 
and  incomparable.  But  to  our  mind,  though  we 
advance  the  theory  in  all  humbleness,  perfec- 
tion implies  more  than  mere  practical  complete- 
ness, means  something  better  than  the  successful 
exposition  of  some  principle  of  gravity,  or  air- 
resistance,  or  other  scientific  force.  It  seems,  to 
us,  to  demand  some  element  of  beauty,  some 
breath  of  the  spirit  as  well  as  the  head,  some- 
thing that  the  artist  as  well  as  the  artisan  can 
acclaim  as  "  perfect.  "  On  this  basis  of  reason- 
ing we  intrench  ourselves,  and  timidly,  very 
timidly,  even  secretly,  lest  the  wise  man  catch 
us,  eliminate  the  boomerang. 

[290] 


«X>  The  One  Perfect  Tiling  ^^^^»^«» 


And  now  wc  have  the  vlohn,  uiishoiildorrd  l)y 
lesser  things  ;  now  wc  have  our  iin[)rls()n(Ml  spirit 
of  the  bright  outer  spaces,  slugiug  through 
strings  and  wood  ;  now  we  have  our  tree-dryad 
given  a  voice,  our  Heart  of  Music  incarnate 
and  triumphant ;  now  we  have  the  One  Perfect 
Thing. 

Haweis,  dehghtful  if  inaccurate  enthusiast, 
declares  that  the  violin  even  possesses  the 
peculiar  attributes  of  a  human  body.  lie  I)c- 
comes  eloquent,  this  dear,  rhapsodic,  clerical 
violomaniac,  when  he  speaks  of  the  sheer  phvsl- 
cal  beauties  of  the  fiddle  he  loves :  "  .  .  .  The 
grace  of  the  curves,  the  surface  never  flat  or 
board-like,  but  full  of  a  beauty  of  levels,  like  the 
satiny  surface  of  a  fine  human  body  !  You  might 
almost  believe,"  he  pursues,  ' '  that  a  whole  system 
of  muscles,  a  very  living  organism,  lay  beneath 
the  back  and  belly,  swelling  with  undulating 
grace." 

Heron-Allen's  fancy,  that  every  violin  maker 
puts  part  of  himself  into  his  work,  must  be  true. 
So  intimate  and  sweet  a  connection  as  exists  be- 
tween the  maker  and  his  fiddle  must  mean  no 
ordinary  bond.  Such  tender  labour  and  uiirc^- 
mitting  devotion,  such  exquisite  sympathy  and 
unbelievable  response  in  thrilling  melody  —  these 


<3s>  The  Heart  of  Music  «!g» 

things  must  constitute,  and,  paradoxically,  be 
born  of,  a  very  oneness  of  spiritual  fibre.  They 
must  create,  even  as  they  result  from,  a  fine 
unity  and  absoluteness  of  understanding  that 
could  only  be  expressed  in  the  minute  language 
of  vibrations.  Surely  there  was  never  a  man 
who  made  a  great  violin  who  did  not  feel  across 
his  own  heart-strings  the  compelling  friction  of 
the  bow  that  played  it ;  no  violin,  fashioned  by 
a  master,  but  carries  in  its  sensitive  wood,  its 
infinitely  delicate  pegs  and  catgut,  its  quivering 
body  and  imperious  soul,  the  spiritual  essence 
and  heart  entity  of  the  man  who  made  it. 

Every  sort  of  attempt  has  been  made  to  improve 
on  the  violin.  There  have  even  been  earthen- 
ware violins.  M.  Ghoquet  played  on  one  once 
and  declared  that  its  tone  Avas  ' '  neither  powerful 
nor  pleasant."  Jules  Fleury,  under  his  nom  de 
plume  of  "  Ghampfleury,"  wrote  a  graceful  little 
romance  of  a  china  fiddle,  called  "  Le  \iolon  de 
Faience."  There  have  been  violins  of  copper, 
of  brass,  of  silver.  One  made  of  the  latter  metal 
is  still  exhibited  in  the  British  Museum  as  a 
curiosity. 

One  of  the  queerest  of  "freak  fiddles"  was 
that  made  by  Gavin  Wilson,  a  Scotch  shoemaker 
who  lived  in  Edinburgh.      He  invented  a  process 

[292] 


«C^;>  The  One  Perfect  Thing  fO0» 

for  hardening  leather  to  use  in  manufactnring 
artificial  legs,  and  ended  by  making  all  sorts  of 
things  with  it.  According  to  the  "  Gentlemen's 
Magazine"  (i8i3),  he  ''made  therefrom  a  Ger- 
man flute  and  a  violin  which  were  not  inferior 
to  any  constructed  of  wood"(!).  This  violin, 
dated  1776,  is  still  preserved  in  the  Conservatoire 
de  Musique  in  Paris,  but  I  never  heard  of  anyone 
playing  on  it. 

Some  persons  have  even  made  fiddles  of  papier- 
mache.  One  horror  fabricated  of  this  material 
is  in  the  possession  of  M.  Georges  Chanot. 
It  is  painted  green  and  gold,  and  even  the  little 
devils  weep  whenever  they  happen  to  pass  by. 

There  have  been  trumpet  violins,  pear-shaped 
violins,  glass  violins,  five-,  seven-,  and  eight- 
stringed  violins.  There  was  also  one  strange 
atrocity  made  of  nails  set  in  a  circular  frame, 
and  played  with  a  bow  of  coarse,  heavily  resined 
black  hair.  Some  of  the  nails  were  long  and  some 
short,  and  the  chromatic  nails  (!)  were  slightly 
bent.  This,  however,  did  not  supplant  the 
ordinary  violin  in  public  favour,  we  understand. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  what  are  these  absurd  in- 
ventions but  the  grotesque  and  extravagant  toys 
that  children  make  for  themselves  from  scraps  of 
wood  and  wisps   of  straw?     The  Perfect  \iolin 

[^93] 


<®>  The  Heart  of  Music  »0O 

has  been  made.  You  cannot  create  something 
more  perfect  than  perfection. 

The  vioUn,  Hke  man,  is  the  fruit  of  the  whole 
world's  evolution.  Unlike  man,  it  has  reached 
the  highest  balance  of  its  supreme  equation  ;  it  is 
fulfilled,  completed,  perfected.  It  has  no  farther 
to  go.  Like  man,  its  first  voice  broke  meaning- 
lessly  upon  the  unrecording  air,  in  prehistoric 
caves  and  undiscovered  islands  ;  unlike  man,  its 
great  journey  toward  its  ultimate  expression  is 
ended,  and  its  eventual  song  divinely  learned. 
No  stage  of  its  pilgrimage  but  has  left  its  imprint 
upon  the  Heart  of  Music,  even  as  upon  the  soul 
of  man  remain  the  records  of  his  slow  ascent 
from  primordial  nothingness  to  comparative  con- 
sciousness. The  violin's  memory  is  as  long  as 
time.  Its  evolution  has  not  been  a  matter  of 
form  and  model, — of  pegs  and  strings  and 
sound-holes  and  bass  bars,  —  of  thickness  nor 
thinness,  of  bowing  nor  plucking,  of  wood  nor 
varnish,  nor  size,  nor  bridges,  nor  making, 
nor  playing,  nor  anything  else  tangible  and 
technical. 

Neither  has  man's  evolution  been  a  matter  of 
legal  regulations  and  sartorial  changes. 

The  connoisseur,  as  a  rule,  will  laugh  at  this 
theory ;   he  will  tell  you  that  when  Amati  slanted 

[29^] 


«»  The  One  Pcrfocl  Thing  <£X* 

his  sound-holes,  when  Tourlc  made  the  perfect 
bow,  when  a  variety  of  other  important  steps  in 
viohn  history  was  finally  taken,  we  find  the  real 
stages  of  fiddle  development.  He  may  even,  it 
has  been  known,  make  queer  jokes  about  the 
sound-post  being  a  signpost,  and  the  bass  bar 
the  basis  of  tonal  endurance  ;  about  using  the 
corner  blocks  to  build  on,  the  tuning-pegs  to 
hang  music  to,  and  the  bridge  to  cross  over 
to  perfection.  He  is  usually  an  amateur,  the 
connoisseur. 

But  go  to  some  old  maker,  —  even  some  quite 
modern  old  maker,  one  who  treasures  one  great 
Amati,  or  Guarnerius,  or  "Strad," — who  has 
no  pretensions  nor  conceit,  but  who  makes  good 
violins,  off  in  some  dusty  corner  of  the  world. 
He  will  talk  to  you  of  the  violin's  soul,  a  thing 
bird-like,  elusive,  known  to  every  builder  of 
fiddles  of  all  time.  He  loves  the  beautiful  bodies 
of  the  instruments,  of  course,  but  he  recognises 
something  beyond,  and  bows  his  head  before 
it.  He  knows,  for  one  thing,  that  every  vioh'n 
has  to  be  rested  once  in  a  while, — laid 
away  in  the  dark  and  quiet,  to  go  to  sleep.  If 
a  man  play  on  it  during  this  time,  it  will  jangle 
irritably. 

"Not  at  all  unaccountable,"  says  the  connois- 


«©  The  Heart  of  Music  <@> 

seur.  "The  experts  have  explained  all  that. 
The  excessive  vibrations  of  the  strings  have 
granulated  the  wood-cells.      That's  all.  " 

The  old  maker  looks  at  him  and  shakes  his 
head  quietly.      He  knows  better. 

"  It  is  tired,  "  he  says  gently,  and  goes  away, 
leaving  the  weary  instrument  upon  some  remote 
shelf,  to  rest  and  dream. 

The  primitive  chants  of  the  early  savages  ;  the 
measured  hymns  of  the  priests  of  Egypt ;  the  wild 
songs  of  Babylon  and  the  dreamy  melodies  of 
India;  the  music  of  Greece,  that  praised  her 
heroes  ;  the  music  of  Rome,  that  debased  her 
citizens  ;  the  music  of  the  dark  North,  that  spurred 
her  melancholy  barbarians  to  battle  ;  the  music  of 
the  South,  that  pulsed  in  blood  already  hot  with 
love  and  wine  —  all  these  old  notes  and  cadences 
linger  still  in  the  Heart  of  Music.  You  cannot  tell 
how  they  have  stayed,  nor  why, — you  cannot  even 
know  where  it  is  that  they  still  vibrate.  Yet  in 
the  finished  instrument  that  bears  "  Stradivarius  " 
upon  its  glowing  wood  throbs  still  the  message 
of  the  East,  the  cry  of  the  North,  the  dream  of 
the  South. 

It  is  ineradicable,  this  old  history  and  old 
mystery  of  the  fiddle.  It  is  for  all  time  ;  for  of 
all  things  made  by  man  the  stringed  instrument 

[296] 


«)»  The  One  Perfect  Thing  C«> 

is  almost  the  most  ancient,  and  it  is  certainly  the 
wisest. 

Who  should  know  man,  if  not  the  vioHn  ?  In 
its  primitive  forms  it  has  accompanied  every  great 
era  in  his  history,  every  important  stage  in  liis 
life.  It  has  lulled  him  to  sleep  as  a  bahy,  under 
hot  Asiatic  suns  ;  it  has  cheered  his  hours  of  soli- 
tude, watching  his  flocks  through  misty  days 
among  the  hills  ;  it  has  pleaded  for  him  under 
passionate  stars,  when  his  lips  were  sealed  by  the 
very  choking  heaviness  of  desire  ;  it  has  played 
him  to  the  magic  of  his  marriage  night,  and 
saluted  his  first-born  in  a  quivering  storm  of 
triumphant  tenderness  ;  it  has  softened  the  harsh 
places  of  his  old  age  with  melodies  that  painted 
the  romance  and  the  vigour  of  dead  days  ;  it  has 
lifted  pain  to  dignity  and  sorrow  to  a  song ;  it 
has  comforted  bereavement  and  commemorated 
success.  Finally  it  has  played  him  to  his  last 
bed,  with  as  full  a  sympathy,  as  brave  and  exultant 
a  melody,  as  it  played  him  to  his  wedding.  And, 
if  his  deeds  were  big  and  his  fame  fair,  it  has 
made  his  name  lovely  with  immortal  harmonies. 

So,  the  friend  and  consoler  of  mankind,  the 
inspiration,  mouthpiece,  and  interpreter  of  his 
highest  moments,  the  wisest,  tenderest,  ancienlcst, 
youngest  of  the   children   of  the  Musical   Gods, 

[^97] 


<is:>  The  Heart  of  Music  C<^ 

the  Heart  of  Music  sings  its  sweet  eternal  song 
above  the  discords  of  life. 


' '  Certain  things  are  good  for  nothing  till  they 
have  been  kept  a  long  while,  and  some  are  good 
for  nothing  till  they  have  been  kept  and  used .... 
Of  those  which  must  be  kept  long  and  used  I  will 
name  .  .  .  violins  .  .  .  the  sweet  old  Amati,  the 
divine  Stradivarius.  Played  on  by  ancient  masters 
till  the  bow  hand  lost  its  power  and  the  flying  fin- 
gers stiffened  ;  bequeathed  to  the  passionate  young 
enthusiast  who  made  it  whisper  his  hidden  love, 
and  cry  his  inarticulate  longings,  and  scream  his 
untold  agonies,  and  wail  his  monotonous  despair  ; 
passed  from  his  dying  hand  to  the  cold  virtuoso, 
who  let  it  slumber  in  its  case  for  a  generation, 
until,  when  his  hoard  was  broken  up,  it  came 
forth  once  more  and  rode  in  stormy  symphonies 
of  mighty  orchestras  beneath  the  rushing  bow  of 
their  lord  and  leader ;  into  lonely  prisons  with 
improvident  artists  ;  into  convents  from  which 
arose  day  and  night  the  holy  hymns  with  which 
its  tones  were  blended  ;  and  back  again  to  orgies 
in  which  it  learned  to  howl  and  laugh  as  if  a 
legion  of  devils  were  shut  up  in  it ;  then  again 
to  the  gentle  dilettante,  who  calmed  it  down  with 

[298] 


«^  The  One  Perfect  Thing  C«> 

easy  melodies  until  it  answered  him  softly  as  in 
the  days  of  the  old  masters,  and  so  given  into  our 
hands,  its  pores  all  full  of  music,  stained  through 
and  through  with  the  concentrated  sweetness  of 
all  the  harmonies  Avhich  have  kindled  and  faded 


on  its  strings. 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  in  "  The  Autocrat  of  the 
Breakfast  Table." 


[299] 


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Music  Library 

University  of  California  at 
Berkeley 


